Underwriting decisions
I messed up and got into a fender bender and since I've never been in an accident, I thought I knew enough about insurance just to get by. I have full coverage through State Farm and an old 2010 Toyota Camry. I've never had an accident before. I was found at fault and was written a ticket for failure to yield and my insurance had to pay for the other car's repairs, which I thought was just a bumper and a fender, but it came out to be over $7,600 from the last they let me know. They said they were still tallying up the entire damage after they were using a rental car for a long time as well. But anyway, point is when I was on the phone trying to get my account to be unlocked because I couldn't access my account once again on the app because it keeps deciding it doesn't know me and locking me out and forcing me to call a number, I couldn't upload any images of my vehicle and I couldn't get too much information. And I just agreed over the phone to file a claim on my car because I thought I had to. And they told me to go get an estimate of the damages and then they would decide whether they would okay the claim or not. I got an estimate of over $2,000 to replace my wheel, fender, and bumper. And I'd only have to pay $500 out of pocket. But every time I asked them how this worked, how my premiums were going to go up, they kept shoving me aside saying, that's all underwriting, you don't worry about it. And I don't like not having answers so I kept trying to find them and all I can kind of understand after being yelled at by my insurance agent to just use the claim and get my car fixed, it doesn't matter, underwriters are the only people that know what's going to happen. I'm thinking there's a possibility I can cancel my claim and it would help stop the increase going up past 62% of my current premium. Because currently I have the discount for not having wrecks before so I'm only paying like $85 a month for full coverage for now until next month when all of this goes through I'm possibly paying over $172 a month. I don't know. Should I cancel my claim right now and just pay for these repairs out of pocket and that will help me in saving some of the increase or is there no withdrawal policy regarding withdrawing a claim for not using it, canceling it because they're just going to see that it was there to begin with and they're going to count that because they just want to make people pay more. I don't know how it works. Can somebody help me here please? Thanks.
Posted Jul 4, 2025, 1:24 AM UTC