My wife was rear-ended by another individual who was insured by Progressive. They came by the house later that same evening to check the car and give an assesment of the damage. My wife's bumper was broken from the impact but the children and she were not hurt. The adjuster wrote a check for about $280.00 for replacement of the bumper and the required.
My wife's car is a 1987 bmw 528e and I have never gotten a tune up for the car that cost less than $300.00 but I was assured that Progressive would make up any difference between the actual cost and the check for $280.00.
We took the car to several places to get estimates for a repair and they all seemed to be well aware of how Progressive does business and they said they would request an additional assesment when they got the car into their shop. My wife and I decided to take the car to our regular mechanic to get what we felt would be a honest and thorough assesment and repair of her car.
The day before she was to take the car to our mechanics she had gone by one more repair shop on Progressive's list of perferred shops to get the third and final estimate when she stopped to fill the gas tank. She came by my job to tell me what she had been told by the body shop and as she was getting ready to leave a co-worker saw fluid dripping from her car that turned out to be gasoline. I had her return to the last shop she had just left because it was only 3 blocks from my job.
Progressive sent a representative by to check the car after my wife had called them to report the trouble with the leaking gas tank. I later called the technician at Car Tech to find out the status of the repair when he informed me that Progressive had checked the car out and said something had detioriated which was causing the leak and they were not interested in pursuing the trouble any futher. I told the person at Car Tech that the gas leak was the most important concern that I had regarding the car and it was imperative that it be fixed. When I asked the manager of Car Tech how much it would take to repair the tank he said he did not know and I would have to agree to pay 2 hours labor at &70.00/hr for them to assess the problem and give an estimate for repair.
That was when I asked how they (Progressive and Car Tech) had come to the conclusion that a car that had never leaked gasoline let alone poured it all over the asphalt before being rear-ended, had a problem caused by the age of the car, without them having already done this $140.00 assesment of the damage. How had they decided it wasn't accident related if they had not already checked what was necessary to know what was causing the leak?
Well many phone calls later I'm $600.00 poorer and wiser. I would not let Progressive insure a pair of roller skates. I did have Car Tech had over my car and took it to my mechanic who removed the tank and had progressive come out again and they were shown the crack in the tank and also that the rubber seals were still good but I guess the metal breaks before rubber in Progressive's universe. I finally had a bright idea and called my own insurance company who sent their adjuster by the garage he wrote the estimate but it did not exceed the deductible because I had let Car Tech repair the bumper and he figured the repair using "Like Kind Replacement" parts (insurance euphemism for junk-yard parts). So I had one company saying the car started leaking gas because it was a 1987 and another company who would fix it with those same old parts. Go figure.
Alfred
Lawrenceville, Georgia
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