Grrrr...Insurance Companies

Everybody hates them. Yet you can't live without them.

Whether it's Life, Car, House or whatever, the Insurance racket will get you.

I know. My early business career was IN the insurance industry....first life, then personal property. So I learned early that this was a racket, but was also, in some ways, a necessity to prevent huge problems later. It was kinda like a savings account, but you put WAY more money into it (ultimately) than you would ever get out of it!!

I have put an awful lot of money into my present car insurer. But, then, we insure 2 trucks, a car, several trailers and a camper. I have made zero (0) claims on them. ZERO!

Then there came the wreck. A UPS truck didn't stop and the little care was impaled in its front tire lug nuts. Fortunately, my 2003 Hyundai Elantra did what it was supposed to and the seat belt and air bag prevented hubby from going through windshield or worse. The impact was so hard, that the mirror bar from the truck created a crease in the front hood!!

I have to admit that at first, they did a great job. They found a rental car for us, 2 days before Christmas. Awesome. But then.....they would only pay $20 a day for the car (which was less than the day rate); and they would only pay it for such and such a time. This we learned the hard way.....after they had offered us a payment we only had a week left for them to pay. The offer was pathetic. There was no way we could replace the car for $2,000. Yes, it was a 2003 Hyundai....and it had high miles......but all you can get for $2000 is a 2003 rust bucket with nasty looking stains and debatable care and even higher miles.

Oh, and there is the $250 deductible.

Say WHAT?

We are not at fault here. Why in the world are they acting like we got drunk, ran off the road and wrapped our car around a tree? After all this money we've put into them, why are we being low-balled? Aren't THEY suppose to advocate for us?
Oh, yeah.....UPS is ALSO their client.

How convenient....just use OUR policy to pay us off for something we did not do!!

So far, it's played out:
We have a $250 deductible
We can only recover the "cost" not the "replacement" of said vehicle, after all, that's what OUR policy covers
We had 1 week to find a vehicle after the first offer, because they were no longer going to fund the rental. Of course, this all happened during the end-of-year-push all car dealers were going through, plus holidays, etc. Hardly enough time to really be able to look around to see what was available.

In other words, we had, basically, 1 WEEK to find and acquire another vehicle!!

We did try. We went to the Bedford Auto Mile....we went to the Mentor area, and obviously tried locally. After what happened, we really wanted another Elantra.

The 2007 with 40,000 miles was $10,000. The 2009 was also $10,000 (with high miles) but was, unfortunately, sold right as we were going to negotiate for it. The used 2010's with 21,000 miles were $15,000 and the new 2011's were $18,000. One of the new 2010's was a manual transmission (which I like, but not in snow), but it was priced at $19,000 since it had leather seats (which I do NOT like). Those were in the "considered" group. There were others (like a 2005 priced at $12,000[go figure]) that had things I really didn't want (like leather seats).

Obviously $2,000 wasn't even going to be a good down payment!

It's not like we were looking for a new/different vehicle......it was not in the financial future. And, it's not like everyone has a few thousand dollars to toss around in this economy (if you have it, I give you kudos).

Yet we've been forced to go in a direction we did not want to go at a time we need to be financially conservative.

I can understand the company wanting to keep their costs low. But fair is fair.

I am being punished because an Insurance Company is playing games. Like the Ally commercial says...."even kids know when something is not right."