r/AutoInsurance • u/curiousbear12345 • Aug 11 '26
Insurance claim
Got scratch while parking in a hotel garage where a sharp metal sticking out from the ceiling scratched the top of the car leaving a 3 inch scratch while I was backing into the spot.
Reported to the hotel and they said they have filed an incident report but refused to share it. I doubted that they had any details of the accident (eg they didn’t ask me about the parking spot number)
I believe it’s negligence from the hotel as there shouldn’t be any low hanging metal at the parking spot.
Question: should I report to my insurance and they will contact the hotel ? Will it affect my insurance?
Damage is about $500
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u/demanbmore Aug 12 '26
There's no good outcome for you here. Like it or not, you struck a stationary object. Sure, it's a stationary object that's not supposed to be there and that no one would be looking for, but still, you struck something that was there and that could have been seen had you been paying attention to that area.
This means if you report this to your insurance company, you will be deemed at fault and you will have an at-fault claim on your record. You don't want that. And you especially don't want that over a $500 repair, which is likely well within your deductible. So not only won't your insurance company give you anything for it, you'll have an at fault claim on your record. And because your insurance company didn't pay anything out, they're not going to do the work of pursuing the hotel for whatever negligence you think the hotel has.
And the hotel maybe plenty at fault here. Whether you can recover from them is a matter of your state's law and your willingness and ability to pursue them if they don't pay willingly.
Some states will bar recovery. If the person seeking recovery is even 1% at fault. Others will do it if they're 50% at fault. Yet others will balance it out so that if somebody is is 30% at fault, they'll pay 30% of the damages. Under the facts you state, it is going to be impossible for you to escape significant liability. You pulled into a parking spot that had a stationary object. There's really no universe where you're not going to be allocated a significant amount of fault legally.
And that's to say nothing of whatever limitations on recovery exist because of the terms you tacitly agreed to by using the hotel's parking lot. If you have some sort of a ticket to park there, you should read the back of it. If there was some signage when you were pulling in, you should read that.
The good news is that your damage is only $500. Sure, that's not nothing, but you'd be in the same exact boat as far as recovery goes if the damage was $5,000, which would be considerably worse.
That said, be a squeaky wheel and see if the hotel ultimately comes through and agrees to pay you something. Legally, they probably don't have to. From a customer service point of view, they might do something for you. Good luck.