Insurance Claim - How should I proceed?

[freebeard]

Well, I would be deceptive to save the life of someone I cared about. If deception is an acceptable tool to achieve justice in that case, then when is it not acceptable?

Every other case?

Not my car, but this is Koral Rot:



I've got the stance, roof rack and (uninstalled) skirts; but I don't have the pop-out quarter windows and the cheese grater.

[Natalya]

My Mustang got rear-ended twice and repaired twice by repair companies. But it also developed a water leak from damage the repair people couldn't find because like yours it was hidden behind carpet.

In any case, what I ended up doing was I took apart the area myself and took some silicone waterproofing stuff, loaded it into a caulking gun, and I used that to seal the leak.

What the leak was in my case was some factory seams between sheet metal had become weakened and open but like ever so slightly that a repair guy would have never noticed. I found the leak by looking for dried dirt markings that indicated the path the water took into the trunk. I followed those paths up to the seams and then went at the seams with the silicone. I never saw water back there again.

This is probably easier than writing angry letters and going for a third estimate.

If you're tying to find the leak and just can't, an option is to have someone outside the car spray it with a hose while you're inside so you can find where the water is coming in.

[jjackstone]

My thought is that it doesn't matter what the previous estimators think. What matters is that the car did not leak before the accident and now it does. Could be that the frame got tweaked a hair and that is just enough to cause the leak. Find someone to diagnose it properly.
JJ

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Natalya

This is probably easier than writing angry letters and going for a third estimate.

If you're tying to find the leak and just can't, an option is to have someone outside the car spray it with a hose while you're inside so you can find where the water is coming in.

My leak sounds very similar to yours. The problem is that the furthest I can easily identify the leak is up the passenger footwell / firewall. I'd have to tear into my dash or remove a fender or other engine bay components to further diagnose the leak.

Just because it's difficult doesn't mean auto repair shops should avoid it. That's their job, and it's the job of the insurance company to compensate them for their time.

I shouldn't have to be driving around with my carpeting pulled up and drain plugs open. My car wasn't this way before the accident, and I'm willing to do a whole lot of yelling and upsetting people to give them the motivation to do the right thing.

I'm not politely asking for a favor; I'm demanding justice.

[Lemmy]

It could be coincidence. When I worked the spammers BITD weld get blamed form some ridiculous things that 'must' have been out fault. The daftest one was a guy who's headlamp relay failed, and he tried to blame us as I'd changed his wiper blades that morning. Apparently is it 'must' have been us.

Coincidence does exist, and if the insurers aren't having it then you'll have to not only identify the source of the leak, and demonstrate the link to the collision.

[Fat Charlie]

Coincidences happen all the time. It's hard to believe that a leak appearing the first time it rains after being rear ended is one of them.

We get some beautiful sinceyas at work, too, but "Sinceya hit my car with your SUV, there's a leak" looks like one of the most reasonable statements I've seen on teh interwebs in a while.

[wdb]

Get your "justice" and then sell the car. Two front end impacts, one enough to total the vehicle, + the leak = lost structural integrity + lost capacity to absorb further impacts.