After an Accident
After being involved in an accident, the very last thing you want to worry about is car insurance repair fraud
– and that is exactly the reason why you may be targeted. Scam artists almost always tend to target those that are most vulnerable. The moments, hours, and days following a car accident can be particularly stressful, as you deal with getting your car towed, talking with the insurance company, and securing a rental car.
For some auto body shops, the scam is an easy one. While most people have little, if any trust, for car mechanics, they typically don’t think twice about being scammed after an accident. After all, the insurance company is the one footing the bill after the deductible’s been paid.
However, the following three car insurance repair scams could prove to be quite costly down the road.
Overcharging Your Insurance Provider for Repair Costs
This type of car insurance repair scam is the most common. You take your carMoney being taken out of pocket into the shop following an accident, and they tell you they’re going to replace just about everything with brand new parts. If using quality-used parts would’ve maxed out your deductible, what harm could there possibly be in outfitting your car with brand new parts instead?
The trouble is: less-than-honest auto body repair shops aren’t going to use brand new parts at all. Sure, they’ll bill the insurance company for the new parts. Unfortunately for you, for those brand new parts you were promised could actually be cheap, shoddy parts that are, at best, unsafe.
While you may not necessarily pay more at the time of the accident repair (due to the deductible limit), there’s no doubt that you’ll be paying a heckuva lot more in the near future when those shoddy parts fail and your car breaks down. When you see that repair bill, you won’t even know what hit you!
