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The Insurance Company Pressures you to Settle or Keeps on Harassing You

Insurance companies can be tough negotiators. They love to take up a lot of your time and give you nothing, especially if you haven’t got an attorney to insulate you from them. Insurance companies protect their interests. Those interests involve collecting premiums and paying out as little as necessary. So if you’ve been injured, their interests are the direct opposite of yours. They’ll use adjusters to try to find ways to deny your claims as they try to deceive you by appearing to be trustworthy. They call you repeatedly, asking innocent-sounding questions about your accident. More on this webpageTheir inquiries may seem harmless. But they’re usually calculated to induce you to say something that could be used against you to deny your claims. Whatever you say to them will probably be recorded and could come back to haunt you as evidence against your claim when it’s time to go to court.

The accident injury clients at our Law Firm have learned from us the best way to deal with insurance adjusters: don’t deal with them at all. Adjusters don’t call our clients; we take them instead. When adjusters can’t talk to our clients, they cannot twist their words around and use those words against them.

Many times an insurance company pressures you to settle your claim for less than it’s worth: often much less. We believe that accepting a fair settlement offer can benefit you and your family after an auto accident. Taking an unfair settlement can be devastating for your legal rights. When you accept a settlement offer, you waive your right to sue the defendant for more compensation from your injuries. The settlement is all that you will ever collect from the defendant. So it’s important not to accept an offer unless it’s fair. But how do you tell a good offer from a bad one?

Insurance companies know that most accident victims are everyday people who, as a result of this accident, are usually strapped for cash or maybe living off savings or some other “rainy day” assets, if they’re lucky. Large medical and auto repair bills need to be paid quickly. Perhaps you are unable to work as a result of your injuries. Suppose a loved one was needlessly killed in that wreck. In that case, your already reduced income is used for monthly expenses, which means there’s little, if any, leftover to pay your accident-related crushing expenditures. More on this webpage
Insurance company’s strategy is to entice accident victims with small amounts of fast cash that might get them back to even. But what if that’s not the end of your financial peril? The settlement you accept from an insurance company before you have an astute lawyer on your side who knows the real value of your damages never benefits you in the long run. They’re always binding. Don’t let the defendant in your case get away with paying you less than you deserve. The only way to determine a fair settlement from an insurance company that wants to victimize you is with the assistance of an attorney specializing in vehicle injury accident settlements.

Maybe you can’t Afford to See a Doctor or Pay your Medical Bills.
Many people don’t have health insurance, which could help them afford the treatment they need after being involved in a car wreck. Even if an accident victim has health insurance, the odds diminish daily that their treatment needs will be paid for through their health benefits because, frankly, health insurance carriers keep changing the rules.

Whether or not they have health insurance is beside the point. Many accident victims are reluctant to get treatment for their injuries because they don’t think they can afford to take time off of work to see a doctor. Perhaps they have higher-than-normal deductibles, which preclude even using their health insurance.

Seeing a doctor and getting treatment for your injuries after an accident accomplishes two things. First, it’s essential for your health in general. And it’s necessary to your injury claim or lawsuit. Making every attempt to recover from your injuries strengthens your case because, parenthetically if you don’t care about your health, why should the court or the insurance company that’s fighting you?

If you can’t afford treatment, or if you already have medical bills that you can’t pay, there’s probably something that our local personal injury lawyers can do to help. We regularly work with doctors and healthcare professionals and can hook you up with the right Texas healthcare providers who will consider your situation. We have helped many of our clients receive the vital medical care they must have after an auto accident, at no out initial of pocket cost to them. But that’s not all. We can prove how the time you take off from work to get medical care should be part of the damage compensation owed to you by the defendant in your case.

You have a General Bad Feeling about How the Insurance Company is handling your Claim
If you have misgivings about how the insurance company handles your case, trust your gut-feelings. The more creative they are in finding ways to deny legitimate claims, the more money they’ll make. One popular tactic is dragging their feet. Hesitation is especially true with most insurers who aggressively market themselves as “minimum coverage” auto insurance firms. However, we admit we have been able to deal fairly with a few of them. Even so, you should call a lawyer if you have a bad feeling that “just won’t go away,” or if any of these circumstances apply:

The insurance company offers you a settlement before the full extent of the medical treatment you’ll need is known.
The insurance company offers you less money than what’s due on your car loan, much less the vehicle’s full value.
The insurance company doesn’t offer you a rental car while your vehicle is being repaired.
The insurance company tells you they’ll pay your claim when you submit your bills, but then refuse to do so or keep stalling you when you ask for payment. (By the way, we NEVER send original bills to an insurer but instead, copies).
The insurance company takes too long to respond to you. This could mean that they’re investigating your claim behind your back or just “shining you on” and haven’t yet told you they have no intention of paying your accident claim).
The insurance company tells you that their settlement offer is “all that you’re entitled to” or “is the best you can hope for and their offer is generous.”
Again – and if you’re lucky – none of these circumstances apply. If so, the odds are pretty good that you can handle your case on your own, without the assistance of a lawyer. Sometimes, plaintiffs can successfully protect their rights when they’ve been involved in a wreck, which resulted only in damage to their vehicle, and there were no injuries. If your car was damaged, but you’re not injured, insurance companies are bound by strict guidelines when it comes to compensating you for damages to your vehicle or its replacement. Since these guidelines give them little wiggle room, they have minimal opportunity to rip you off when they reimburse you for your repair bills or vehicle replacement.

After a wreck in which your car alone has been damaged, take down the other driver’s contact and insurance information. Then, drive your car or have it towed to a mechanic. The mechanic will bill your insurance company directly, and your insurance company will pay the mechanic. Then, your insurance company will submit the repair bill to the other driver’s insurance company for reimbursement.

But sometimes, these two insurance companies will dispute which of them should ultimately be responsible for these bills. But that’s not your problem unless it’s a ruse that leads to denial. Under normal circumstances, they settle their disagreements through a process called subrogation, without any further complication to you. In cases where the damage to (or replacement value of) your vehicle exceeds $5,000, it’s a good idea to at least talk with a lawyer about possibly representing your interests if the insurance companies can’t decide which of them is to pay. This keeps them from becoming a nuisance by involving you in an argument that involves them, and not you. Sometimes it even encourages them to settle their dispute among themselves and leave you out of it.