Hi I’m Tim Olson with Dent Terminator, thank you for watching today we’re actually going to talk about hail damage and how to file an auto hail repair claim to make the claim go as smoothly as you possibly can I just read an article that I thought you’d be interested in and what should you do you kind of hear the things about well first you should call your agent. Some people say don’t do that it’s a waste of time some say go get three estimates is all that true well let me show you what I found this was an article it’s actually in a Texas newspaper and it says Insurance Agent Breaks Down Storm Damage and Insurance Claims and so it’s basically saying that here’s what you should do in a hailstorm and if the roof of your house gets damaged and so he’s telling people to make the first call is actually, he says the first call should be your agent so let’s talk about that for just a second, is that the best way to go? it can be what I’m going to tell you today is maybe your agent and you play golf with and maybe he even lets you win and you might be best friends with him and maybe want to call him What he’s saying in the article is that you need to know your deductible.

Well I recommend you know your deductible kind of going in and that’s important. You might call him there to find out the deductible if you get a hail incident, what he’s also saying is that let’s get that claim going. In other words let the agent get the claim going. And is that the right move? Well, it might be and it might not be. The second thing is he says go get three estimates.

And I can tell you for sure that’s probably not the right thing to do and I’ll give you the reason here in a minute but, so let’s talk about letting him file the claim. Well, once he tells you your deductible, if it’s 500 maybe you wanna go ahead and file the claim. If you look at your car and you can see just like I mean there’s dents on it, that are very visible in the sunlight, it’s probably gonna be over 500 and in fact its probably gonna be north of a 1,000, north of 2-3-4,000 even if you can see ’em outside. So you probably want to file a claim then if you know you’re gonna wanna get it fixed.

Now if you can’t see the damage that hail, then you’re like I don’t know did it hail or not, well that wouldn’t be a great idea to get that claim going because it may or may not count against you. So that’s the time when you want to bring it to Dent Terminator which by the way if you do have hail on your car go to tulsahail.com so remember the location and what you’ve got, tulsahail.com and they’ll take you to us so we’ll help you out. So thinking about bring it to us, in other words let us look at it first and we’ll give you an idea quickly is it actually gonna be above your deductible or not? Now the other things is that they tell you to go get three estimates and here’s why that doesn’t actually work. There’s two sections, two reasons each. So the first part is most frustrating for you as a client and really the agent should know this but what happens in a storm is that it’s either gonna be a catastrophe, or it’s not gonna be a catastrophe.

And so what I’m gonna take is let’s say that only a few cars get damaged in your town. So that’s not a catastrophe. And so it’s gonna be handled by the local people. But what happens is once the agent files that claim, then the insurance company, whoever you’re with is gonna say go to X body shop and go get an estimate because they’ve already got those partnership agreements with those body shops and no matter what you do it’s not gonna matter, you’ll get your three estimates for us if you want to but you’re still gonna wind up back at X body shop.

Now, you wanna do business with those guys? You might, you might not, I would say that because they’re in a partnership with the insurance company to me that gives me pause okay but especially today, it’s not as common as it used to be. But the second thing is that, remember this is a non catastrophe event, so you’re frustrated because you went and got these three estimates and they’re all over the map, they’re all kind of all over the price-wise but it doesn’t matter because you gotta go to this guy. So which of the body shops do you choose? I mean are you gonna choose based on price and all that? Well, you might, and we’ll come back to that.

Think about this for a minute, so we mentioned two instances ones a non-catastrophe which we just told you, you’re gonna go to X body shop. Now let’s talk about a catastrophe. So what is a catastrophe that just basically means that there’s more than X number of cars in your town that got hit with hail so maybe it’s 100 cars is the threshold maybe 500 claims, if their phones ring off the hook that one or two days then they’ll file a catastrophe or declare, that’s what I should say. Once they do that, now nobody can write an estimate on it. Only the catastrophe team that they send in can write estimates on it, so that being the case, now all that leg work again that you did is pretty much a waste of time because you still gotta go take and get it back and looked at so what I’m kind of trying to do is make it as smooth for you and not waste a bunch of time.

Because the third thing that happens is, I don’t know if I’m third or fourth honestly, sorry but the other thing that happens is that you take it and get those three estimates at those body shops, they kinda know already the game so now they’ve got a choice, they can either explain to you what I just told you or they can just go ahead and write you an estimate. Send you on your way and maybe send you a card or maybe a brochure that tells you why they’re better than x,y,z. The estimates you’ll notice are kind of all over the map and so here’s what happens, either the estimator goes through it real quick and he kind of just says it’s this on the panel, this on the panel, this on the panel, or he actually goes ahead and writes a thorough estimate.

So maybe the thorough estimates gonna be the highest estimate but now you went to another shop when he didn’t write a through estimate and so you’re thinking well, why is he up here and why is he down here, what’s going on here ? And so what I’m telling you is that it’s almost like a throwaway so once the car’s actually getting fixed, then it’s going to get priced exactly as it should be and the way that that happens is through supplements. And a supplement is basically the hail, no matter what was what happened on the first estimate or even when you were told to go to the cat team or you were told to go to the body shop that the insurance company told you to go to then once it goes to the shop of your choice, which hopefully you choose not based on price but you choose based on quality and reputation then once you take it to that shop then they’ll supplement it to where it should be and that’s gonna have to happen no matter what almost in most instances with hail.

So hopefully you understand that it may be a good idea to call your agent to file an auto hail claim but only to find out your deductible, probably don’t necessarily want him to get the claim going and it definitely don’t want to get those three estimates at least not on your time because you’ll be wasting that time because you still gotta go at some point either to the cat team or to the shop that the insurance company has chosen. So once you get that, now once you get that initial preliminary estimate then you can decide and please don’t decide based on the fact that they sent you there because that’s not really a credible source. Their partnership with the insurance company should not be the reason why you choose that company, please choose ’em for their quality and reputation but once you have that either from the cat team or from the body shop that they chose, once you have that, now you can go anywhere you want to and you can go to the body shop of your choice that’s actually your right as a citizen of the United States.

So hopefully this helps you with the hail damage claim, I hope I didn’t talk too confusing but anyway, if you like this video you think it’s worth sharing, somebody that might have a hail claim or might have one in the future.

If you have any more questions how to file an auto hail repair claim, make sure to talk with an insurance agent familiar with this matter.