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I managed to do $1750 of body damage to my car last week in a stupid accident just involving me and my garage. Going in for the estimate, I thought it would be a lot less than that and figured I'd just pay for it out of pocket instead of having it affect our insurance rates.
Talking to the body shop guy who wrote up the estimate, he thought that if I filed a claim for this, our insurance might go up $100 or so per year for 3 years and then return to it's approximate prior rate. (We have a clean record - no claims in probably at least 15 years.) I think we have a $500 deductible, so if that was the case, we'd pay about $800+ out of pocket total as opposed to the full $1750. He suggested that I talk to my insurance agent and have him work the numbers.
SU does not think that this is correct. She thinks that it would significantly affect our rates for 7 years. She also thinks that if I call our insurance agent just to talk about it, our rates may go up or there would be some other negative consequence to even mention that we had an accident (even if we didn't file a claim). She thinks that we should just pay for the repair work ourselves.
I'm inclined to think that my SU is overreacting and that the body shop guy probably knows more about this stuff than she does.
Who's right?
Is there any harm in calling my insurance agent to discuss?
Thanks for any words of wisdom from the JL community.
Talking to the body shop guy who wrote up the estimate, he thought that if I filed a claim for this, our insurance might go up $100 or so per year for 3 years and then return to it's approximate prior rate. (We have a clean record - no claims in probably at least 15 years.) I think we have a $500 deductible, so if that was the case, we'd pay about $800+ out of pocket total as opposed to the full $1750. He suggested that I talk to my insurance agent and have him work the numbers.
SU does not think that this is correct. She thinks that it would significantly affect our rates for 7 years. She also thinks that if I call our insurance agent just to talk about it, our rates may go up or there would be some other negative consequence to even mention that we had an accident (even if we didn't file a claim). She thinks that we should just pay for the repair work ourselves.
I'm inclined to think that my SU is overreacting and that the body shop guy probably knows more about this stuff than she does.
Who's right?
Is there any harm in calling my insurance agent to discuss?
Thanks for any words of wisdom from the JL community.