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I went toe-to-toe with my insurance company--and they blinked!
The Untimely Death and Miraculous Rebirth of La Reina Sucia
Anyone who has followed my adventures on this forum probably knows I drive a Jeep, a Grand Cherokee, black in color and very well used. My first real off-road adventure with my Jeep was shortly after I bought her. A friend and I toured Canyon de Chelly, back when they still allowed visitors to drive themselves through the goop in the washes. The Jeep performed like a champ, but she got so darned muddy that we gave her a nickname: “La Reina Sucia,” the Dirty Queen.
The mud ultimately washed off, but the name stuck, and in the years that have passed since then, the Queen has transported me in style on the Alaska Highway,
through the mountains and jungles of Mexico,
from coast to coast in the USA,
and all over my native southwest, researching road trip routes for my travel book, Arizona and New Mexico: 25 Scenic Side Trips.
To say that I’m attached to the Queen would be an understatement, and despite her aging frame, I can’t even imagine a vehicle that could ever be more appropriate to my needs.
Last October, my wife and I were driving along on a busy Phoenix street when we felt a sharp jolt that knocked us sideways, and I realized that the SUV in the lane to my right had just veered into me, sideswiping my Jeep from the rear. The driver took off down a side street, and in heavy traffic, there was no way for me to chase him. He’d crushed my right rear fender and put a nasty gouge in the rear door. It was strictly body damage, but it made me mad enough to file a hit and run claim with my insurance company. They took a statement, reviewed photos, and authorized me to proceed with the repair. I chose a body shop that I’d dealt with before, and they worked up an estimate, which my insurance company accepted. The repair was going to take about three weeks, and it was going to cost me $500 out of pocket, the amount of my deductible. Better that than driving around with a bashed up fender! Or so I figured.
A week before the vehicle was scheduled to be ready, I got a call from my insurance company informing me that the body shop had just submitted a supplement to their original estimate. After tearing it all down, they determined that the fender was too badly damaged to repair. That meant they’d have to replace the whole quarter panel, which effectively doubled the estimated cost of the repair. “Mr. Quinn,” said the claims adjuster, “We can’t pay that much for this claim. I’m afraid our only choice here is to declare your vehicle a Total Loss.”
“Excuse me?” I replied. “You want to TOTAL MY JEEP, over a DENTED FENDER? You can’t possibly be serious!”
Needless to say, she was completely serious. When the cost of the repair hits 80% of what they determine to be the vehicle’s value, it’s automatically a Total Loss, even if the damage is strictly cosmetic. She gave me two options: they would pay me $6,500, and I’d sign over the title to my beloved Jeep and walk away. If I wanted to keep the vehicle, they would pay me $5,200, which I could put toward the repair, but my Jeep would have to be registered as salvage. A salvage title cuts the value of a vehicle dramatically, and makes it difficult to insure, so there was no way I was going to go that route voluntarily. The cash settlement was an even bigger joke, since there was no reality in which that low-ball amount would cover the cost of an equitable replacement. I begged the adjuster to consider alternatives. What if I was to pay the difference between the salvage value and the cost of the repair? Not possible, she said. If we let you do that, we’d have to let everybody do that. Okay, so what if I paid for the costly quarter panel out of pocket and donated it to the shop? Absolutely not an option—that would be dishonest! How about they just put it back together and I dropped the claim? Sure, she said, but if I did that, I’d be liable for the cost of everything done by the shop up to this point, along with the cost of the rental car they gave me to use. All that came out to nearly $2,000, just to get my Jeep back with the fender looking worse than ever?
I argued from every angle I could think of, because it simply didn’t make any sense to discard a perfectly good vehicle over a dented fender! I asked if there was any possibility of an appeal. “Isn’t there someone higher up in the company, some VP of Customer Service who might at least consider my arguments?”
“Mr. Quinn,” she said sternly. “I’m a Total Loss Specialist. That’s my whole job, and I can tell you that when a vehicle has been declared a Total Loss, there is no appeal. These decisions are not arbitrary, and they can’t be reversed. That’s a state law” I wheedled. I cajoled. I flat out begged, but all I got for my trouble was a deadline. “I can give you a week,” she informed me. “After that, you’ll have to make a decision.”
To say I was upset would be putting it mildly. Neither of those options was remotely acceptable to me, so I threw the ultimate Hail Mary: Instead of making that impossible decision, I had an actual heart attack, and was hospitalized, twice, (for the placement of stents in my coronary arteries). Meanwhile, I became a major thorn in the side of my insurance company. I sent emails, I left voicemails, I enlisted assistance from my local insurance agent, as well as the owner of the body shop. Turns out that at least some of those people were human, and took pity on an old man. In the end, the insurance company did what the adjustor swore was impossible: they reversed the total loss decision, paid what they were willing to pay, and allowed me to make up the difference. Last week, more than three months after dropping her off at the shop, La Reina finally came home.
There’s a lesson here, for anyone who drives an older vehicle. If you’ve taken proper care of your ride, if it’s in good condition, I can guarantee that there will be a large gap between the value that you place on it, and the value that the insurance industry places on it. If you’re in an accident, even a minor accident, be very cautious about filing any insurance claims. It doesn’t matter one bit who’s at fault. Once insurance is involved, they can and will take charge, and when you consider the extremely high cost of body work, situations like what I just went through become all too common.
I had all but given up, convinced I'd never see my Jeep again, but I was insanely persistent, and I got lucky. The day that I pulled the Queen back into her spot in my driveway was a very happy day indeed.
Rick Quinn
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Originally Posted by Rick Quinn
