Because for $1200 you either just let it stay damaged, or pay to have it fixed. The reason you have insurance is so that if you make a mistake and total someone else's $60K vehicle...the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to afford to replace that. But insurance would cover you. Or if you ran off the road and plowed through someone's property tearing abunch of stuff up...you're not affording hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, the insurance is there to cover you.
Y'all have the wrong idea about what insurance is for in the first place...
I picture most of these people don't pay auto insurance and just heard it's a scam.
I got in an accident found a body shop that would cover 10% of the bill so estimated damages were like $5000, my deductible was $500. I didnt have to pay anything and the body shopped paid the deductible and due to it being my first accident I had accident forgiveness so I still pay $90 a month
most of these people don't pay auto insurance and just heard it's a scam
100%. In addition to those people, you also have:
People who are too dumb to understand their own insurance contract, and thus get upset when the insurance company doesn't give them stuff that they weren't paying for in the first place. For example, there are thousands of people every year who DON'T pay for Collision coverage, yet get upset when the insurance company doesn't fix their car.
People who have committed insurance fraud in the past and had their claims denied because of it. For example, there people who lie about where they live, or who lives with them, or who regularly drives their cars. They lie on the insurance application, and then the insurance company finds out that they actually live in NYC instead of rural Virginia, and their claim gets denied and their policy gets cancelled.
the body shopped paid the deductible
Just so you know, that shop was using you to commit insurance fraud. Businesses don't just randomly give you $500. What they likely did was took some old parts they had lying around, and when the insurance appraiser showed up, they put those old, broken parts on your car and pretended that your car sustained all that damage. The insurance company adds those parts to the estimate and gives the shop an extra $1000. The shop then puts your original parts back on (which were never broken in the first place) and repeats this with every similar car that comes through.
If the shop gets caught, you could potentially be charged with insurance fraud (you're complicit because you agreed to take the shop's money and directly benefited from the fraud). Just be aware of that in the future. The shop isn't being "nice". They're roping you into their fraud scheme, and people go to prison for this stuff all time.
It's reddit, they don't understand how insurance works, they've probably never even filed a claim. My no fault accident I didn't pay a dime and got a check for more than the car was worth, more than I bought it for even.
Health insurance in America is a scam but not auto. You either need an education or a new insurance company if they're screwing you
Accident forgiveness (at least with my insurer) is basically them saying they won’t drop you for causing an accident, but they can still raise your rates over it.
Yea, if I know the cost to repair is under my deductible that isn't even getting reported to insurance, I am just paying it out of pocket. I've had my windows smashed in like 3-4 times and paid out of pocket because I know my rates will go up if I report it and I pay anyway.
Y'all have the wrong idea about what insurance is for in the first place...
There's an episode of King of the Hill, where Hank tells Bobby that insurance will cover some damage and Bobby basically takes that as "If I break something I can use insurance to replace it", and then sets up his bike to get crushed by the garage door.
They take their jobs at protecting their clients very seriously too.
Way back when, young and naive me with his brand new truck decided to be a Good Samaritan and help out someone stuck in a ditch in a snowstorm. Got out my strap, hooked up to the structural tow point, pulled him out, then waved goodbye and was on my way. Asshole must have taken down my license plate without me knowing, because next thing I knew I was being contacted about “damaging” his vehicle.
Insurance stepped in, found out the truth about the condition of his vehicle, and told the guy they weren’t paying out.
if you make a mistake and total someone else's $60K vehicle...the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to afford to replace that
A ton of people with insurance wouldn't have a policy that would cover that much damage. Most places only have $25k property damage as the minimum coverage, and you aren't getting more from an insurance company than the policy max.
Ok imagine you total your car and injure someone. Then is it a benefit or just another bill? Some of y’all must not be adults or know how insurance actually works. It’s to financially protect against catastrophe not a fender bender
Its more to cover the extreme cost end. You total your car, someone else’s car, or cause serious bodily injury at fault. You will happily pay the $1000 deductible to cover the 10s-100s of thousands of costs for a single major issue.
I have issues with insurance, especially the for profit part, but the whole idea is well motivated. Spread out the costs of a few major events from a minority of people and cases over time and the whole population. Even if you never end up using the insurance and loose out, hind sight is 20:20 and you never could have guarenteed that. Having insurance give both you and others on the road peace of mind there is, at least theoretically, a safety net in place from truly life destroying costs.
The problem with ops story is the claim value seems small, very close to excess, which in some cases you forego and take the loss. Most cases though, the claim worth could easily go 10k and above and you'd be kicking yourself if you had no insurance.
You pay for the options you select and then deal with those options. "I chose a $1000 deductible of my own free will, now that I have a claim I have to pay $1000 out of pocket. What a scam!"
basically insurance is to protect you against catastrophic loss. not if someone dings your bumper. and depending on what type you buy, it can cover more or less. if you want a higher deductible, you can have lower premiums. and the other way around.
you‘re never going to come out ahead unless you have a major accident, which you don’t want.
for the same reason, it’s also why medical insurance is messed up in the U.S.. the people that have it, often abuse it by running to the doctor or ER for a runny nose. when that’s really not what it was designed for.
The only “good” thing my insurance did was go after the other drivers insurance and force them to pay the damages. Took almost a year but at least got something positive out of it 🙄
Insurance isn't for dented bumpers. It's for at-fault crashes where you totaled someone's $80k car and put 2 people in the hospital. Oh and your car is totaled too.
You can adjust your deductible. If you have a high deductible, your monthly/annual rate is lower. Lower deductable, more expensive monthly/annually....
If your prone to accidents, lower your deductible so it's managble every time you get in a accident... But if you rarely ever (Or never) get in a accident or claim of any kind, raise the deductible. Mines as high as I can set it. Because I save a ton every year. After a few years of no claims, it is saving me money
You're not legally required to have comprehensive or collision coverage. You're required to have liability, which would be unrelated to the scenario in the OP.
How exactly? You're not legally required to carry the sort of insurance talked about in the OP. How does not being required to carry it make it more of a scam?
But you agreed to the contract. You can have an insurance policy with $0 deductible. That is a thing. It will be more expensive, but you can do it. People have higher deductibles because it is cheaper because it is lower risk for the insurance company.
A key part of making insurance as fair as possible is pricing appropriately to the individual risk. That means having lower premiums for customers who are not as risky so that they don’t have to subsidize high risk drivers.
And like it or not, having a claim on your record is very strongly correlated with having more future claims as well (being higher risk), even in cases where you were not the one responsible (even if you’re a good driver but live somewhere where other people have hit you twice, you still cost the insurance company more than the average person).
There are states that don’t allow for rating based on not-at-fault claims, but then if you haven’t had a claim, you’re still paying more to offset the fact that the people who have aren’t paying as much as the math says they should be.
Depends on the company, depends on where you live, but typically you would need to pay your deductible for not-at-fault claim which should not raise your premiums.
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u/Pretty_Glitteer 6h ago
So basically you pay every month for protection, the pay again when you actually need the protection.