On the 10th of Sept our daughter got herself a new car… Today my wife is telling me that our daughter had called and someone had rear-ended her.. on the 10th of Oct.. the day that the first payment was made on the car. The car had a total of 500 miles on the odometer.
My wife is relating what our daughter had said about how accommodating the insurance company of the driver that hit her was… had given her a rental car and was doing to take care of all of the repairs on her car. I asked who the insurer was of the driver – STATE FARM..
Over the years, I have been in two accident with a State Farm insured.. both accidents .. my vehicle was sitting still… both incidents.. State Farm denied any liability.. One of the accidents involved a company vehicle – F-350, diesel, 14′ box truck… and in this particular accident. State Farm claimed that my employee was “not driving defensively enough”.. This truck was sitting still and a 11,000 lb diesel truck is not a very nimble vehicle.
By accident, a few of us at work were recently talking about vehicle accidents and one person stated that he knew of a person that was sitting still and hit by a State Farm insured and State Farm wanted the person who was sitting still and hit.. to be held 10% responsible for “being in the wrong place at the wrong time “… WTF ?
As soon as Barb told me how “nice” State Farm was with our daughter’s wreck.. my “antennae ” starting wiggling… and my “little voice” started SCREAMING “something is wrong here !”
I was working around the house & yard and put his issue in the back of my mind… sort of a back ground task… after a while the term came to me “diminished valuation”.. that I had read about at some point in time… So I “Googled” “diminished valuation wreck car”.. and it would appear that a car can lose up to 33% of its value.. when in a wreck..
Light bulbs started lighting and bells started going off.. State Farm had not become altruistic … their insured had hit/wrecked a NEW CAR with 500 miles on it… They are wanting to get my daughter’s car repaired and back to her and get her to release them… Hoping that this young woman, would be so happy to get her new car back.. that she would not realize that State Farm could be screwing her out of 8 K- 9 K. Because the value of her car had dropped.. because of the actions/in-actions of one of their insured.
In fact there is a whole legal community that deals with just this issue with insurance companies..
I have instructed my daughter to SIGN NOTHING with State Farm.. until some phone calls can be made.
I suspect that this is not going to turn out like State Farm would like for it to…
Filed under: General Problems
Leave a Reply