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Insurance didn't cover my rental car even though I was told they would?
I'm 19 and had an incident with my car where an architectural issue in a parking lot damaged my car. The owner of the parking lot contacted their insurance and they paid for the repairs on my car, but it took them a while to do it and submit the payment so their insurance company set me up with a rental vehicle.
They DID pay the first week of the rental car, but it turned out they didn't pay the last 3 days. When I talked to the rental car company they said it wasn't a problem and that they'd contact the insurance agent to extend out the payment. I then signed off releasing the car and giving it back to them.
Now a week later the rental car company called me and said that my insurance was refusing to pay for the last 3 days and that the balance due is $300.
I don't have that money...I work part time and have classes full time so I don't earn a lot. I don't even have $100.
Idk what to do, I feel cheated? I also feel like I shouldn't have to pay anything because I was mislead.
What do I do?
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Talking to the rental car company won’t do anything for you other than maybe get them to set up a payment plan for you.
Most states follow what is known as the “Rule of Agency.” This is part of a bigger law though what it means is; you had no reason to disbelieve what the person told you or that person who told you this was not authorized to tell you this. It means in states that follow this rule the insurance company has to pay the bill.
What you need to do is the following:
1. Call the insurance commissioner’s office for the state you live in and file a complaint with them against the insurance company. Your complaint is that you were told by the adjuster that they would cover the last 3 days of the car rental and now they have refused and the Rental Car Company is billing you.
2. At the same time call the State Department of Licensing. Every Company that does business in the state must have a license to do so. On that license is the name of their business agent in your state. You want the name and address of that agent. Do the same for the company that owns the Parking lot.
Once you have the name and addresses of the agents you go to your local district court and file a claim against the insurance company & the Parking lot Company together for the $300. You could add a reasonable amount of money for your time and effort to do all this as it is taking time from your job and studies. The judge may or may not award this to you though the judge will very likely award you the $300 and court costs.
3. One other thing you might want to do is call your local TV station. Most TV stations have a legal line reporter. Yours is just the type of story they might want to help with.
Unfortunately you are learning very early what it is like to deal with these types of things. In the future make sure to get everything in writing. Even an email is good just make sure to save the email and to print it out if possible. A paper trail is your best offense or defense in these matters.
It is going to take some time and effort on your part though you should be successful. The insurance company is counting on you not wanting to fight the big guy they are. I can attest that when you know your right it does not take a lot of money to fight them it just takes stamina to put up with their tactics of delay.
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Best thing you can do is contact the rental company and try speaking to them about this and how you were told it wouldn't be a problem only for you to then be sent the bill. You may need to speak to someone in the company that is higher up in terms of position because I doubt anyone at the front line will be able to do anything about it. You could also try speaking to the insurance company that refused to pay, if you had to wait that long for your car to be repaired then it would make sense they would cover your rental costs for that duration so I don't really understand why they then refused the last 3 days of the rental. It will likely be a pain but to get this resolved you will probably need to call around to find out what is going on and where it went wrong. An alternative might be to seek some legal advice about this but this is something I suspect will cost where you are located (in the UK they offer a service where you can talk to a solicitor for one session of free advice who can give you some guidance in matters like these so if a service like this exists out there it might be an idea to get in touch with them to see if there is anything you can do from a legal stand point). Otherwise you can refuse to pay the bill as you deem it unfair and something you did not agree to in the first place but I am unsure of what the repercussions of this could be.
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