Vernon- You indeed do have some valid points and facts, but some aspects are missing. I'll address those as well as other aspects of what I've learned in this whole process and some courses of action I feel should have been taken in order for this deal to have gone smoother. Now that the insurance company has agreed to pay for the rental from 11/1-12/20, part of the situation that I was fighting has been resolved- like the lack of communication between Enterprise and the insurance company that snowballed into the reason no later follow-ups had taken place. Bear with me here.
Yes and no. As far as I have learned from talking to State Farm and others, when making a claim to your policy, there is a rental car coverage agreement if you have added that to the policy. In this case, yes, you are correct that there are xx days or a maximum dollar amount that your policy will cover for you. If more time is needed, it can be authorized with appropriate documentation/agreement. On the other hand, when you are the non-fault driver making a claim against the at-fault's insurance, there is no set number of days or a maximum dollar amount for rental car coverage. However, when an estimate is written up by the insurance company, there is an automatic calculator that looks at the type of parts being repaired/replaced, the amount/hours of body work/paint being called for and an estimated lead time for the parts to calculate a number of days needed for a rental car, should it be needed. This is "estimated" by software, not a person and is not a contractual agreement to coverage. In my case, the original estimate had this at the bottom:Originally Posted by ISAtlanta300
Rental Calculator
Labor Hours - 18.8 HRS
Refinish Hours - 7.3 HRS
Mecanical Hours - 0.0 HRS
Frame Hours - 0.0 HRS
Days - 5 DAYS
So based on the write-up, the calculator determined that 5 days were all that was needed. When I took the car to Performance, their original estimate did not have a rental car calculator because it was not initially written up as an insurance estimate, it was a general damage estimate. This estimate was then submitted to Hartford for approval. When Hartford received this estimate, they deemed it to be significantly more then their recommended shop's estimate (ABRA) and sent out an adjuster to re-appraise the damage and work out an agreement for repairs. They agreed on a new estimate for repair. However, the agreed estimate also only had 5 days of rental car coverage calculated based on number of hours of work needed. As soon as the supplement was approved, I received a copy and the process moved forward (see note on 11/7 in OP). Mind you, this is already 7 days into the claim.
Also, I was contacted by a friend who actually works for an insurance company and handles automotive claims. I was told directly from this person that there is no set number or cutoff for a rental car for the non-fault's claim...that they can't just say right away "you only get xx days and we stop paying". If contact with the insurance company was made when I picked up the rental, the insurance company would have been "in the loop" on the billing, they probably would have made contact with me well before the number of days became "unreasonable" and we would have resolved any issues. Like I said above, that aspect has been resolved after a conference call with Performance, Hartford and me....only after I had been doing all the footwork for the insurance company when they could have simply called Performance and asked them for a timeline of events when they got the rental car bill. But they did not. They simply scoffed at the bill which caused Enterprise to contact me with "what I owed"....putting all of this into motion.
This is where the other problem lies, a paradox, and where I am trying to help them understand this process. To me, the paint protection is a very special beast here. While it is indeed an add-on accessory (like my bumper), it has a very specific function- to protect the paint from damage. I can understand that if I had a cosmetically damaged wheel that would need an extended number of days to replace, I could drive the car until a replacement was located and ordered. I also see it that if the wheels was damaged to a point of being a safety concern, the car would be deemed "undrivable" until the replacement situation was resolved (be it by replacement or exhausting available reasonable resources and paying the owner a dollar figure). But the paint protection does not work like that. I understand that the insurance company probably has not dealt with this product as it is still fairly new. But they need to become familiar with it. I have tried to explain the product and the purpose of the product and the required process to applying the product to a freshly painted surface. But I feel they simply just don't care to want to understand it and to know how to deal with it later. I also feel that a lot of the cars with the film are on "nicer" more luxurious vehicle....and feel many people with such cars probably have other cars. In that case, it would be completely understandable to not cover a rental car. But I do not have a second car to use. So I drive it home and park it....then what? I still need to go to work and school. How do I do that? I'm having a very hard time accepting the fact that I should be responsible for not wanting to damage the paint before the job was complete and that I should be expected to "fend for myself" for those 21 days for a situation that was caused by their policy-holder. Why should I have to either pay out of pocket for a rental car or be left car-less and figure out how to get to school and work?
I would be very confident in appointing myself as "an expert" on the subject of discussing MY car and what would happen to the paint if I were to regularly use the car for 30 days while the paint properly cured. I have been through the process of having bumpers painted and seeing damage occur in a very short time period several times in the 10 years I have been driving a modified car. I know this so well that I paid out of my own pocket to have my bumper protected to prevent chip damage. My point being that if I drive the car, I can say without a doubt, that damage to the paint would occur. If the paint was damaged, it would NOT be in the condition it was in before the accident and before the claim is closed. So now I would have a bumper with damaged paint AND the car is not "completed" in the sense that the film has not even been applied. On TWO occasions dealing with this I have been told "well, if damage happens before the film is applied, then we will have the shop submit a supplement and repaint the bumper"...I was told this by the adjuster and by the supervisor at Hartford. Now what kind of logical sense does that make? Why would you be willing to pay for another supplement for damage that could very easily be prevented? This is what I am trying to make them realize.
OK, I'm finally about to wrap this up. Really. Bottom line is that their policy holder caused an accident and damaged my car and all I wanted was to have it returned in the condition it was in before the accident. When the Hartford and that policy-holder agreed to a contract, the Hartford assumed any liability to any situation the policy-holder could cause. So here is my new presentation I am about to bring to the table in an attempt to get this resolved. I've thought long and hard about how I can make my case in a way they can understand. I think I maybe have been conveying my defense on a "consumer" level too much. So I shall present my next round of defense as something like this:
By not driving the vehicle for the curing period required by the manufacturer of the paint as well as the guideline of the repair facility, and by recommendation of the manufacturer of the protection film, I was acting in the best interest of the insurance company to limit and prevent any further expenses relating to my claim. It would have been negligent on my part to not prevent damage to the paint before the repairs were completed by taking delivery of the vehicle and driving it before the application of the paint protection film. You (the insurance company) have expressed at least two times, by two people, that had damaged occurred that it would have been handled by approving a supplement for the part to be painted again. Not only would this extend this the claim further, it would also nearly meet the initial cost of the rental car for the 21 days between when the shop "completed" the work on December the 20th and the date the rental car was returned on January 10th, which amounts to $550.29. Since you have admitted that if damage occurred you would have approved a supplement for repair, which according to the estimate would cost ~$352.80*, there would also need to be the added cost for a rental car. I would estimate about 3-6 days (leaving the chance that a weekend could be involved) for an added cost of anywhere between $78.61 and $157.23*, for a total of $431.41 - $510.03 to repaint the bumper and cover a rental car. So a "savings" by you of between $40.26- $118.88 from the original $550.29 for the 21 days of rental car coverage you are currently not covering as part of the claim. I would like come to a settlement on the $550.29 as soon as possible to resolve this matter. *Numbers are based on the final supplement (bumper repair) and the same rate for the rental car from Enterprise ($22.99/day + $1.50/day VLRF +7% tax).
As far as Enterprise goes, I'll be contacting their corporate offices to see if I should have been allowed to leave before verifying the claim was valid. I really want to know if they were supposed to do this or not. When I talked to one branch, they said they are supposed to, but the branch manager at the location I used said such calls "are a courtesy service they do for customers" and that they are not required to contact the insurance company when a claim is not set up in their ARMS pre-approved reservation system. If they are, then some fault is on them, but if not then I feel the insurance company should have either contacted me asking about the subject or even ask about the rental car when following up with the body shop. I know I tried several times to contact my "claims representative" and was never contacted back, though I doubt they will have any record of me calling him. The notes from Enterprise show where they made a follow up call on 12/12 and never received contact from Hartford. I would like to imagine that any proof of them failing to return calls would give me even more leverage in all of this. Furthermore, they had approved a rental car when they wrote the estimate (and I know when I set up the claim I said that I would be picking up a rental car when I dropped my car off). I do see two things here though, I see where I assumed that Enterprise and Hartford would make contact or that Hartford would have followed up with me or returned my calls. I also now see that I could have called them and told them I was in a rental car shortly after picking it up. I do know that they knew I had one at one point when I talked to the adjuster in late December and told him I had it, but what he knows on that subject probably does not matter nor does it give me ground to say 'Well I told your adjuster I had one and that he should have done something with that knowledge!".
Oh well, we'll see where this goes.
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