Have you been in an auto accident?  If so, you are about to negotiate the rather tricky business of filing an insurance claim, and Benny’s Auto Body Repair (bennysautobodyrepair.com) wants to make sure that you have all of the information you need to make an educated and informed decision regarding filing your insurance.

When you are in an automobile accident there is plenty of stress to go around, and some of this comes from your responsibility in filing an auto insurance claim with your insurance company.  This involves a number of steps that can be quite daunting, but which simply need to be followed in a logical and concise order.

Initiating the Claim

In order to get the claim process started, you are going to have to initiate an insurance claim.    This usually includes calling a toll free number in order to report your accident to a customer service representative.  Of course many companies now have an online process for initiating a claim.

If you choose to initiate your claim online you usually log into your insurer’s claims page using your user name and password (which hopefully you have set up previously).  If you encounter problems, you can call the company and usually information such as your name and social security number or address/birth date will be enough to initiate the process.

When you initiate a claim you are going to be asked a series of questions and you will need to have some answers ready.  These questions include things like the following:

  • Policy number (can be found on your insurance card).
  • Date of the accident.
  • Location of the accident.
  • Description of how the accident occurred.
  • Name, address, license plate, and insurance information for the other party involved.
  • Name of the police department involved.
  • Police report number.

There may be more information that your insurer will ask for, but the list above is a good place to start.  Be sure, no matter how traumatized you are, to file your claim as soon as possible.

After Filing a Claim

Once you have initiated the claims process (which will depend on your insurer and the type of claim you are filing), the process varies depending on your insurer and the type of claim there are a number of steps you will need to go through.  If at any time you are unclear as to what is happening or what to do next, your insurance company has people available to deal with your questions.  This is what you are paying them for, don’t feel bad about having them do their job.  The next steps will include the following:

An insurance adjuster will most like evaluate the damage or have you get an estimate on how much it is going to cost to repair the vehicle.

Depending on the situation or circumstance you may receive a call from another person’s insurance company in order to ask you for details regarding the accident and/or to verify your insurance information so that person can initiate a claim of their own.

Depending on the severity of the situation, you may need to hire an attorney that specializes in personal injury in order to keep the process running smoothly and to make sure that you have covered all your bases.

Once these steps have been taken, it is simply a matter of sitting back and allowing the insurance companies to work their magic.  If you are not at fault the matter should be resolved fairly quickly.  If you are at fault in the accident it may take a bit longer.  But soon your claim should be resolved and any money that you are owed should be coming to you to help cover the cost of the damage to your car.