Hello BG, long time lurker here, decided to post this and see if any one has experience with car insurance.
[story] Sunday afternoon was out with my wife near where we lives just driving by, made a stop sign and turning right, saw a car moving a little but though the guy was just parking into his spot so proceed to go, next thing i know the car is already right next to me as i couldn't react to it (try swerved to my right but not much room to dodge him). i heard a bang and i got a sideswiped.
Lucky i got myself a dash cam 2 months before (got into a car accident 2nd day after purchased this car). police screwed me over as they only heard the other guy story saying i ran a stop sign and hit his car with my rear side. true story was i got rear end but i was making a turn and the guy try to dodge me with turning as well result in getting hit on my side. Long story short so i got this dash cam and below is the video.
picture:
Dude know he's at fault but he insisted not to call the police and make a fuss about it and said he could handle my repair bill, but i explaind i still need to file a report in case he back out and pretend this never happened... So i got the police coming and filed for a report, dude still promised he want to settle without insurance involved, me and my wife said fine (since we afraid even clearly the guy's at fault but our insurance rate will still go up).
Fast forward, next day my wife got an estimate and told the guy it'd cost him $1100 to replace the door since doing a paint job might not come out perfect and i don't want a half ass job to save this guys any money because he's the one who should be responsible, anyway, the guy said the price is too steep and saying your car still drivable blah blah blah, i could get this fix for 400-500 and he wasn't really at fault with this accident. so we said fine, we'll go through the insurance...
Now the question is... from the video, what's the chance of getting 100% claim from his insurance? i know it'd be easier just to get my own insurance involved but the last accident i had with similar scratch and dent they quote us $2000+ and we have a $500 deductible for each accident, plus they are real slow on handling our case, so i would like to take the claim on our own and avoid being have to pay the deductible, has anyone done it before?
Any opinion or if anyone here who used to work for car insurance can share how to deal with this kind of post accident claim would be much appreciate!