Car insurance claims

0:00- [Instructor] So let's think about the steps you need in order to make a car insurance claim. So step one here is have an accident. I'm only, well, I'm joking about that. Obviously, we want to avoid having accidents. Step one is, when you have it, you don't wanna make a car insurance claim in life generally.

0:19You don't wanna have accidents, but if you do have an accident, like we very clearly show right over here, then you say, "Oh, my car is damaged. I should make a car insurance claim." And so what you have here is the person is taking a picture. You want to document.

0:34You want to document what went on. And now, don't take just one picture. Take multiple pictures of the different angles, and make sure you remember the time and day and wherever. As many details as you can know about what's going on, try to track that all down.

0:51If this was involving someone else, try to get their insurance information as well. If anything else got damaged, someone else's car, some other property, take pictures of it all. So then the next step is, you need to actually make the claim. I'll make that step two: Make the claim.

1:09Step one is have the accident, (laughing) which I'm only joking about. Step one is to document it. Document the accident. Step two is to actually make the claim. You will call the insurance company. The insurance company will oftentimes point you to a website.

1:25Some of the times you can just do this on a website where you'll upload things, you'll way what happened. They'll go and ask you a bunch of questions about what happened. Sometimes they'll say, "Hey, can you get a quote from a local mechanic or a local body repair shop to see what it would cost?"

1:40Or maybe they have ones that they know about. And all of that is going to go into a checklist to make sure that they have enough information they need in order to decide how much is this claim valid for. So let's say that the local body repair shop and everything that you were able to tell them, and they were able to give an invoice for what it would cost to repair the car, let's say that it is $2,000.

2:05$2,000 is what you think or what the body repair shop thinks that they need in order to fix your car. But you have a deductible. Remember, a deductible in insurance is what you have to pay before, what you have to pay out of pocket before your insurance kicks in.

2:23So let's say that you had a $1,000 deductible. $1,000 deductible. So then, your insurance company would say, "Okay, your claim looks legitimate." And actually, I'll call step three the review of the claim. So when they're reviewing it, they say, "Okay, it looks legitimate.

2:40There's no fraud here. You really got into an accident," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. "Okay, it looks legitimate that this is a bill from a real car mechanic." They'll review it and say, "Okay, so you should repair your car for 2,000, but there is a $1,000 deductible."

2:56So the check that they'll actually write in this case is for the amount above that deductible. So they will write a check for $1,000. Remember, this 1,000, this isn't the deductible. This is the 1,000 above the deductible that you need to get to that 2,0000. If, let's say the car repair bill was $2,800, and if the insurance company when they review it say, "Yeah, that looks about right," they'll take your deductible away or out of it, because that's what you need to pay out of pocket.

3:26And then they would send you a check for $1,800. And just to review: Why do they do that deductible? Well, they don't want, they wanna create some incentive for you to make sure that you don't get into car accidents and that you're not just calling every time there's a scratch.

3:41They want some hurdle, one for you to not wanna get into accidents. No one wants to get into accidents, but if you had zero deductible, then any small thing that happened, you might be calling in. You might not have as strong of an incentive to take care of your car.

3:55But when you have a deductible, you're like, "Okay, the first $1,000, I have to pay myself, so this is something I really want to avoid." But then they will, if it's a legitimate claim, they will pay up to the amount that they decide is what is necessarily to get you to be made whole again.

4:09And I know this isn't easy to see. This is an eight that I wrote there, $1,800.