18:14 Friday, 29 November 2024
Car insurance providers are notorious for either offering lowball settlements or denying valid claims. If you’ve been injured in an automobile accident and you’re attempting to recover damages, here’s why you won’t get very far trying to negotiate directly with an insurance adjuster.
Insurance adjusters are trained to keep offers low
Every insurance adjuster is trained to offer the lowest possible settlement from the start. If you’re lucky enough to negotiate a higher offer, it’s still going to be extremely low compared to what your case is actually worth. Car insurance companies are for-profit businesses despite insurance being mandatory for all drivers. They will protect their profits at all costs. They do this by denying valid claims while hoping the person will walk away, and offering low settlements to desperate people.
Without a lawyer, you won’t know what your claim is worth
Only a car accident attorney can know what your claim is truly worth. That puts you at a disadvantage when trying to assess offers and make counteroffers. No matter how hard you try, you’re going to get short-changed. Unfortunately, if you’re in a bad financial situation, you’ll be tempted to accept a low offer if it sounds like it might be decent. In reality, most of the time, offers made to injured parties without a lawyer are far too low.
It’s really tough to get generously compensated without legal representation. For example, attorneys from the Rizk Law firm routinely negotiate on behalf of their injured clients to get them the settlements they deserve. Lawyers know exactly what a case is worth and can work the insurance adjuster, through negotiations, to get them to pay out fairly. A lawyer can also fight a denied claim by filing a convincing and effective appeal. Attorneys pay good money to find injured clients, and they have every reason to fight hard.
The car insurance business model relies on limiting payouts
Car insurance companies always try to price their policies so that they aren’t charging too much or too little, based on risk. However, sometimes this doesn’t work out, and they end up charging too low of a premium. In this case, when they have to pay out a claim, they lose money. Even though there are plenty of other people who never file claims, and they still make a big profit, they consider this a loss. This is why car insurance prices have risen significantly in the last four years, rising by 57% to an average annual cost of $2,300.
The main game for an insurance company is to charge high enough premiums that will cover any claims they have to pay out, and you never know when your claim will be unfairly denied or lowballed. If you don’t have a lawyer to negotiate on your behalf, you can’t possibly know if you’re getting the short end of the stick. An attorney will know immediately, and will fight to hold the insurance company accountable for their legal obligation to pay your claim fairly.
Your claim has a maximum
Your case has a maximum settlement amount that no insurance adjuster will ever reveal while you attempt to negotiate with them. There’s no way to negotiate higher than this amount, but the problem is you have to fight tooth and nail for every dollar, and there’s a slim chance that you’ll get anywhere near your maximum. Insurance adjusters bank on this, and that’s why they lowball every offer and make it hard to negotiate higher. They want you to be exhausted and take what you can get.
Negotiating with an insurance adjuster takes too much effort for a small return
When you engage in negotiations with an insurance adjuster, you can expect to spend a lot of time and energy trying to get an extra few hundred or couple thousand dollars, depending on your claim’s value. Most people don’t want to go back and forth with negotiations for too long, but even if you’re ready to take it head on, the return you’ll get for all of your invested effort will be small.
Never fight a car insurance claim alone
The bottom line is that without an attorney to negotiate on your behalf, you don’t stand a chance at getting the payout your case is worth. Instead of wasting all of your time and energy trying to fight for a few extra bucks, hire a lawyer to get you the compensation you deserve.
