Firestone Can't Take Pictures on Cloudy Days?

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SwampSurvivor

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I switched to ESurance recently. They scheduled me an appointment at a local Firestone to get pictures taken of my car. Apparently this happens any time you switch insurance companies and have comprehensive on the vehicle.

This morning, I get a call from Firestone saying that they are not able to take the pictures since it is cloudy out and that they were going to cancel my appointment.

They could not take my pictures BECAUSE IT WAS CLOUDY??????

I called ESurance and got an extension for it. Very livid.

I managed to find a local independent shop right by work that was able to take the pictures and send them in to the insurance company.

I'm not sure what happened at firestone ... but saying it is too cloudy is not a good excuse. They could have just said they got a better paying job scheduled and that they were not interested in my pictures.

My guess is an old lady or something came in for an oil change early in the morning and they made up a lot of nonexistent problems with her car to keep her there all day and make a lot of money off of her.

Their loss. I was going to buy two new Winterforce tires while I was there
laugh.gif
 
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I agree, that is a very very weak excuse. I went to firestone car care center once and never went back. IMO, they're the definition of why mechanics and shops get a bad name.
 
I was there for an inspection a few years ago. They said my Wheel bearings and U joints were bad (which they were).

They quoted OVER $1000 for both to be done! Absolutely crazy!
 
Why would a local tire shop be tasked by an insurance company with taking pictures of a new customer's car? Strange. Were you not given the option to do it yourself for some reason?
 
Originally Posted By: Bottom_Feeder
Why would a local tire shop be tasked by an insurance company with taking pictures of a new customer's car? Strange. Were you not given the option to do it yourself for some reason?


The insurance company contracts through "Carco" who in turn contracts out through local shops.

Seems all firestone chain stores do this. I went to a local garage to get it done.

I think the problem with having me do it is they are not sure if I am sending them photos of when the car was new or if I am sending them current pictures of a worn out / beat up car.
 
I've never heard of having pictures taken when switching insurance companies. Is this normal? Never happened to me.
 
Even if you are adding a car to the policy with comprehensive. I had to do it with Geico too.

The idea is ESurance wants to make sure I don't have any hail damage, smashed fenders from before I was insured with them.
 
My mom's car had to have this done when she switched insurance.

She wound up taking it to the Jordan Marsh Auto Center-- part of a department store chain that merged with Macy's.
 
Originally Posted By: dishdude
Must be a state by state thing, I have never had to do this in
NV or PA.


I think it depends on the company. When I brought my Mustang back from NJ (new but a 1997 bought in Jan, 1998) State Farm wanted the agent to take pics.

I think it's more to cover them as without them there's nothing preventing you from turing around a week later and claiming damage.
 
An elderly lady that lives nearby always had her Focus serviced at Firestone. One day the motor seized...no oil plug. They said it wasn't their fault and she wouldn't fight them on it so they got away with it.
 
Originally Posted By: tc1446
An elderly lady that lives nearby always had her Focus serviced at Firestone. One day the motor seized...no oil plug. They said it wasn't their fault and she wouldn't fight them on it so they got away with it.


Feel free to post some negative reviews on her behalf on yelp etc. For the exact location she went to. Give them a little justice.
smile.gif
 
OK, in NO way I am defending Firestone as I can not stand them but when I started out working I did work at a shop that did do these insurance photos. Same company that was said previously, Carco. Now I'm not too sure if it's still done this way but they would supply us the cameras and film which was Polaroid, yes those instant cameras.

Now when taking these photos if it was indeed cloudy those pictures wouldn't come out right and then the insurance company would have the customer come back down again and guess who would get the brunt of that anger!!! So either way you were dammed.

So what we did was explain about it be cloudy and affecting the pictures and probably being made to come back and get them done again. I guess Firestone should have explained it better IF their using the same type of cameras.
In this day and age I do have a hard time believing their not using digital cameras and uploading them or something like that.
But again this was all done about 15 years ago.

And yes some people would demand to have the pictures taken inside the building on cloudy days but that was futile as you could not get great angles the insurance companies wanted and bad reflections if there's any damage needing to be documented. All in all it was a pain in the ...
 
The garage that ended up doing the photo for me used a digital camera. He just emails the pictures to Carco and faxes the paperwork for it over.



Originally Posted By: tc1446
An elderly lady that lives nearby always had her Focus serviced at Firestone. One day the motor seized...no oil plug. They said it wasn't their fault and she wouldn't fight them on it so they got away with it.


I saw a review for this firestone on CL where someone was complaining that their car failed inspection for frame rot. And it was firestone's fault because the oil filter is by the frame ... They rusted the frame out performing oil changes ...
 
When I added my '95 Mustang to my insurance, the AAA guy came out to take pictures of it. His camera died and he just had me take a pic of the front and the rear of the car with my phone and email them to him. When I added the '14 the AAA guy peeked his head out, saw the car and that was all that was needed.
 
I take pictures as part of my job. I can say that cloudy days are preferable to sunny days when it comes to taking pictures. I guess the folk at Firestone needed to come up with some lame excuse to go to a ball game or something else more interesting.
 
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