The Insurance Company of the Driver At Fault for an Accident Should Always Pay to Get the Other Person’s Car Fixed.

Q: I was recently in an accident where another driver pulling out of a parking lot hit me while I was driving. My insurance company is not being helpful in explaining whether or not my insurance rates will go up if I report the claim and I need advice as to what I should do.

Should I:

1. Fix the repairs myself and not report it?

2. Report the car accident to the other person’s insurance?

3. Report the accident to my insurance?

A: First, let me start off with a disclaimer. We are not license insurance agents or claims adjusters, the opinion that I am about to give is based on my experience in the insurance field and should not be taken as official or legal advice.

Now, with that being said I would take option number 2.

Your insurance company is being vague about your rates going up because the customer service rep you talked to is protecting themselves from committing as to what will happen in the future with your premiums. They don’t want to get in trouble for telling you something wrong and have a lawsuit result from bad information given. Trust me; I answered this question at least once a day like this when I was a customer service rep.

If the accident was really not your fault the other person’s insurance company has the legal obligation to pay for the damages to your vehicle. By going directly through the other company you will not have to pay your deductible to get your vehicle fixed, but you will be at the mercy of the other insurance company as to when they decide who is at fault for the accident.

Yes, your insurance company will eventually find out about the accident after they pull your CLUE report and find it on there. But, it should be listed as a “not at-fault accident” and should not be charged against you, regardless of how much the claim ends up being. If your insurance company does raise your rates after an accident that is not your fault and they didn’t pay anything for you to get your car fixed, you seriously need to be looking for a new insurance company.

The owner of the vehicle is the one responsible for the insurance coverage.

This is actually a two part question:

1) I am driving someone else’s vehicle do I need my own insurance?

2) I am driving a vehicle covered with an Arizona car insurance policy, so do I need my own insurance because I am driving it in California?

First, no, you do not need your own insurance coverage when you are driving another person’s car. Insurance follows the vehicle and not the driver. If you were to get into a car accident, the insurance on the vehicle would cover the accident.

Second, I would check to make sure that the coverage that is on the vehicle meets California minimum requirements. Really there should be no problem here as Arizona minimum insurance requirements are just slightly higher than California requirements, but check just to make sure you are okay.

As far as required coverage, since the vehicle is registered in Arizona, it is not in the California insurance database. This means that California will not be contacting you to get your own insurance on the vehicle.

Yes, in this case an insurance refund is due. An insurance company cannot charge you for insurance premium on a vehicle that you do not own any longer. To receive the refund, you will have to provide the Bill of Sale from when the car was sold as verification that it was no longer owned by you.

In the case that you are helping out another individual, like an elderly relative, you may have to provide power of attorney papers to accomplish anything on their insurance policy. Otherwise, they will have to personally make the refund request themselves, but you can still help them with getting everything moving.

A look at the top 20 vehicles with the best insurance rates for 2012.

Insurance rates can vary drastically. One year a vehicle may be listed on a list like the one below as a cheap vehicle to insure, while the next year they may be nowhere on the list because of a model redesign. Insurance rates on vehicles also depend heavily on the information of the people that are driving them.

The following list was released by insure.com and was based on a middle-aged driver with a good driving record.

Now, with all that said, here are the 20 vehicles with the best insurance rates in 2012:

1. Toyota Sienna LE
2. Toyota Sienna
3. Jeep Patriot Sport
4. Jeep Compass Sport
5. GMC Sierra K1500 Regular Cab
6. Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Regular Cab
7. Dodge Grand Caravan SXT
8. Ford Escape XLS
9. Toyota Sienna
10. Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Extended Cab
11. Dodge Journey SXT
12. Honda Odyssey LX
13. Kia Sportage
14. Hyundai Santa Fe GLS
15. Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sport
16. Nissan Frontier S King Cab
17. Nissan Frontier SV King Cab
18. Hyundai Tucson GL
19. Ford Escape XLT
20. GMC Canyon

Reporting a bad experience with an insurance company is important to protect yourself and others.

All of us have had a bad experience with an insurance company at one time or another. If you haven’t, there will be one at some point in your life. There are different levels of bad experiences you can have and you are the only one that can determine if the experience is bad enough that you need to tell someone about it.

For example, a disagreement over a small refund may not be something that you want to waste your time and effort on. Whereas a situation where a tow truck that should have been called to come get you off the side of the road wasn’t, when you have towing coverage, needs to be escalated.

In the situation with the tow truck, the first step you need to take is to call the phone number you called with the insurance company for the tow truck and ask to speak with a manager. If a tow truck was supposed to be called and was not, this could very well be an issue with the call center representative. If you don’t get anywhere with the manager, contact your insurance agent about the bad experience.

After the agent there is really nowhere else to go in this situation as the next level up is your state Insurance Commissioner or Department of Insurance. Because the situation with the tow truck would be more of a customer service issue there is really nothing they can do. The only times that the Department of Insurance or Insurance Commissioner would get involved after a bad experience is in the event of fraud or illegal activity by the insurance company.