Not Much Assurance About The Insurance, Part 24

Auto Shop, Baltimore, Insurance, Maryland, USA | Right | October 10, 2025

We’re an auto shop that gets insurance claims brought to us primarily from an insurance company whose mascot is a little talking reptile with a British accent.

When it comes to any form of insurance claim, there is one golden rule: the insurance company will only cover costs if you are actually getting a vehicle repaired at our shop or if the vehicle is a total loss per their system. They won’t pay just for an estimate, and to get a full, comprehensive estimate, we have to do a teardown of the vehicle (disassemble where the damage is to assess for further damages), which comes with labor fees.

We’ve had a customer who cannot seem to make up his mind about whether or not he’s bringing his car in. His appointment was for one date, but he wasn’t able to drop it off because the rental car company had nothing available. Our main estimator was on vacation at the time, so I offered our usual alternative, which is to get photos of the vehicle and damages and email them to the insurance adjuster for a visual estimate. No problems there, he lets me do so, and I email it over.

The adjuster sends over the estimate, and once I have the estimate in the system, I call the customer to see when he would like to drop off so I can get a rental set up for him. He doesn’t answer, and after several days, I cancel the assignment.

When he does finally drop off (two and a half weeks later), and I have to reopen his assignment, he refuses to sign one of the authorization forms. We have two forms that customers have to fill out, one being authorization for teardown and repair, and the other to authorize insurance companies to pay us directly for repairs.

He refuses to sign the second form because he decides he doesn’t want repairs; he just wants an estimate. I explain to him that we have a visual estimate from the insurance company, but if he wants a full teardown estimate, he will have to pay the labor costs because the insurance company won’t pay just for an estimate.

Cue almost twenty minutes of back-and-forth of him not getting that the insurance company isn’t going to pay us to just write him an estimate if he’s not getting repairs done. I have to use an analogy and compare it to a landlord paying his tenants to live in another house to emphasize that this does not work. Eventually, my manager has to step in and explain it to him in the exact same terms.

I end up tuning out the rest of the conversation as it’s akin to talking to a brick wall, and he storms out. I canceled his assignment and moved on with my day.

Two hours later, he comes back in and says he’ll drop off for repair per his lawyer’s advice, so I have to reopen his assignment again. He says he’ll drop back off later, that he needs to come up with money for the rental deposit, and fills out the forms.

It’s been a week. He still hasn’t come back, and I just know that as soon as I cancel his assignment for the third time, he’ll show back up.