Remember the bad day when I found out the other party in my May car accident was seeking more money from me? Like, almost $4k over my damage limit which was $5k? I sent the letter from his collections person to my insurance person and thought she was going to contact him to dispute it. She never did. So I started hearing from them again. So today I called her and long story short, talked to the scary collections man. He offered me a settlement of "only" $2400. I told him I could not pay that amount without knowing exactly what I am paying for. Because honestly, that man's car was worth maybe $5-6k. Not $9-10k. It was a 1999 Jetta, folks.
The collections man told me the insurance company had placed a hold on the file and was considering seeking even more money. And he had offered me a settlement to avoid "rattling cages" with the insurance company.
What the freaking heck? (Notice me curbing the swears!)
I think he is trying, in his very charming Southern-accented way, to intimidate me. What do you think?
As much as I would love to get this settled and taken care of, I am getting ticked enough to want them to actually take me to court and see how in the heck they plan to make it look like a 1999 Jetta is worth more than $6k. Ever.
3 comments:
Welllll.... as someone who has more than enough experience in this arena, tell the man to piss off. They can't just demand money like that without evidence of the car's worth! I mean for crying out loud, my grandmother's Honda Civic, which although it was a 1991 or so, it was in PERFECT condition (maintenance on anything that can be maintained even though all they ever did was drive to the grocery store and the doctor's) and had less than 10k miles on it and we only got $4k for it! So.... basically they're trying to screw you and intimidate you, and they shouldn't even be contacting you they should be contacting your insurance.
Because no way in the universe was this 1999 Jetta in that kind of condition.
Most insurance policies require the insurance company to pay for the legal defense of the claim. This is true even when they have already offered the policy limits in settlement. This is generaly refered to as the "Duty to Defend". You may want to contact the insurance company and speak specifically with the legal department. You can ask them about their duty to defend and how they plan to fulfill that duty in this case. If you are not getting any responses you may want to write a letter to the legal department mentioning that you think they are acting in "bad faith" by failing to fulfill their duty to defend.
All of the legal defense costs should be born by the insurance company. For example, if the case went to trial they would have to provide an attorney to defend the case, but whatever judgement resulted from the trial that exceeded the policy limits would be paid by you, but all the legal costs would be paid by them.
Attorney's make $100-$200 per hour, so for a $4000 judgement they would have to spend less than 20-40 hours depending on the rates in order to make the case worth pursuing. This may be why they are offering a lower settlement. It also may be a simple negotiating tactic (this is why your insurer should do the negotiations with you signing off on the actual excess amount.)
Also, if you look the car up for its blue book value and conclude that it is only $1000 over the insurance, you could make a counter offer.
Anonymous, are you my dad? Fess up.
Thank you.
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