Quote:
Originally Posted by miked
I've never really understood insurance. The companies insuring you have a conflict of interest in that it is in their best benefit to screw you over. Like they have shareholders and profits, and in most places it is required to purchase various forms of insurance (health, car, etc), so they have a vested interest in returning as little to you as possible within the confines of a 30 page policy to cover my car in an accident.
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I'm not sure that this is still the case, but I worked for an insurance company right out of college in the early 2000's, and there was a percentage cap that the insurance
had to spend on claims. I believe it is enforced by state law, so insurance companies cannot screw people over (too badly). I was trying to Google to see what it is/was and I think it is called the 'Combined Ratio,' but I couldn't find actual numbers to be certain. Basically, the Combined Ratio is (Losses + Expenses)/Premiums. So, the insurance companies have to spend a certain amount on claims - it wasn't like we were ever told to lowball or anything like that. In fact, property damage (car or house or item values were usually the least of our concern, as long as the repairs or replacement was done and there was no fraud) was the least of our worries - the much bigger and more variable expenses were injuries and pain and suffering, as they can potentially get into the courtroom and balloon to really high numbers, whereas property always has a pretty fixed cap on its value.
Like Lathum, I always tried to be fair and, honestly, didn't really give much of a shit. It wasn't my money and it was always easier to settle and close my cases rather than screw around over a few hundred or thousand dollars. If someone showed me 4 or 5 examples of how much something cost, it was the easiest thing in the world for me to approve because the evidence was there and already documented - I didn't have to do much beyond cut a check. I'm not saying this is the case here, but a lot of times, people just had unrealistic expectations of how much their property was worth or what condition it was in. Those situations were always more difficult to settle on the customer side than getting my supervisors to approve something on the company side.
I think JPhillips is doing the right thing by trying to find examples of what similar make/year/model/mileage vehicles are selling for. At our company, we used a market search company (like it sounds like here) and then our unwritten rule was, if they could find 3+ examples of similar cars, we would average them together and pay that amount (sometimes with adjustment for mileage).