What Rights Does the Californian Law Give You as a Customer of an Insurance Company?
The state of California takes car insurance very seriously. There’s a regulation called “Fair Claims Settlement Practices Regulations” that force the insurance companies to the following:
- Let you know of everything that the policy covers, including time limits or any other clause, by writing.
- Start an investigation and provide you with forms and instructions on how to make a claim in a maximum of 15 days of receiving your notice of claim. The notice that you give can be written or oral.
- Respond to any communication from you in a maximum f 15 days.
- Accept whole or in part, or deny your claim in a maximum of 40 days after receiving proof of claim. Proof of claim is the documentation that you give them that proves the damage that has to be covered. It’s very advisable that it includes a police report. You should also send copies of photographs, estimates from repair shops, and hospital bills.
- Pay for a tow truck to take your car to whatever place is appropriate. However, if the insurance policy recommends a towing company and you use another one, you might not get the money back.
- Give you a fair settlement. Whether you lose your car completely or have it repaired, your insurance company has to give you a settlement that’s equivalent to what you had before the accident according to market value. The same goes for medical and legal bills if they are covered.
- Pay you in no more than 30 days after a settlement has been accepted by you. In the case of repairs, the repairs shouldn’t start later than the 30rd day after settlement has been accepted. Don’t worry, they won’t take that long in repairing your car. If your car had that kind of damage, they would declare it a total loss and either pay you money or get you another car.
- Give you sufficient notice that they will not store your car anymore or will stop paying for storing it. When a car is damaged enough that you can’t drive it, but not enough that it’s considered a total loss, then it may need storage and many insurance companies provide it for a limited time.
Those are the obligations that all insurance companies operating in California have to abide by. Remember, if you know them, you can demand them.