My wife was rear ended in a 3 cars accident early July. She was stopping at a red light, a pickup truck rear ended the other car and that car hit my wife's 1991 Mercury Tracer. A slight bumper scratch and a small dent on the rear hatch.
The pickup truck driver then ran away, luckily another driver saw the accident he followed that guy wrote down the license plate number and the address that pickup stop at. He came back to the accident scene and gave information to police, the pickup driver was arrested for hit and run and potential DUI.
We were waiting for police report to find out which insurance company that guy has to file for damage repair, 2 weeks after accident we received a letter from Farmer Insurance saying that they are investigate the accident, if we had our car repaired they will reimburse the full amount up to total lost. But we didn't have it repaired yet, because the damage was so minor.
Yesterday, after talking to Farmer insurance agent we took the car to their "Drive In Inspection" to see how they estimate the damage may cost to repair a car with current market value of around $800-1200. My guess was it may cost $100-200 to repair those minor damages, their estimate was $930 from what they can see and 5 days to repair it, and they said if the repair shop find more damages after the rear bumper is removed then they will pay up to $500-600 more. They said because of the car excellent condition (they also noted that the car has 4 new tires), the market value is actually higher than blue book, and since they saw the car in person and took some pictures, they may be able to talk to their supervisors to increase the car value to $2200-2500. They also pay for car rental, initially for 5 days directly to Enterprise car rental and if the car is in body shop longer they will cover car rental as long as needed, the only cost to us is gas.
They then issued a check of $930 to us for the initial estimate cost to repair, and in the paper they put down something like this "If the cost of repair is more than $930, the repair facility should contact them and they will verify and if the total amount is not more than the total lost they will pay the extra". They recommended 2 very good (and expensive) body shops in Irvine, but said we can take our car to any body shop we like.
The two persons at Farmer Insurance inspection office were very nice, didn't try to do any trick and seemed to please us every which way. In general, we had very positive experience with Farmer Insurance.
Our insurance is Mercury and we are very happy with them too.
The pickup truck driver then ran away, luckily another driver saw the accident he followed that guy wrote down the license plate number and the address that pickup stop at. He came back to the accident scene and gave information to police, the pickup driver was arrested for hit and run and potential DUI.
We were waiting for police report to find out which insurance company that guy has to file for damage repair, 2 weeks after accident we received a letter from Farmer Insurance saying that they are investigate the accident, if we had our car repaired they will reimburse the full amount up to total lost. But we didn't have it repaired yet, because the damage was so minor.
Yesterday, after talking to Farmer insurance agent we took the car to their "Drive In Inspection" to see how they estimate the damage may cost to repair a car with current market value of around $800-1200. My guess was it may cost $100-200 to repair those minor damages, their estimate was $930 from what they can see and 5 days to repair it, and they said if the repair shop find more damages after the rear bumper is removed then they will pay up to $500-600 more. They said because of the car excellent condition (they also noted that the car has 4 new tires), the market value is actually higher than blue book, and since they saw the car in person and took some pictures, they may be able to talk to their supervisors to increase the car value to $2200-2500. They also pay for car rental, initially for 5 days directly to Enterprise car rental and if the car is in body shop longer they will cover car rental as long as needed, the only cost to us is gas.
They then issued a check of $930 to us for the initial estimate cost to repair, and in the paper they put down something like this "If the cost of repair is more than $930, the repair facility should contact them and they will verify and if the total amount is not more than the total lost they will pay the extra". They recommended 2 very good (and expensive) body shops in Irvine, but said we can take our car to any body shop we like.
The two persons at Farmer Insurance inspection office were very nice, didn't try to do any trick and seemed to please us every which way. In general, we had very positive experience with Farmer Insurance.
Our insurance is Mercury and we are very happy with them too.
