Q: How was my car insurance company able to cancel my policy without giving me any warning?

A: Normally, insurance companies have to give you a certain number of days warning before they can legally process a car insurance cancellation. The number of days they are required to give and how they give it depends on the state you are in. There are states where the cancellation information is located on your bill and in other cases a separate notice is sent.

If you do not believe you were given notice, there could be a number of different reasons. One, you could have missed the fine print on your bill with the cancellation information. Two, you may have missed the cancellation notice in the mail.

Three, if you did not pay your renewal payment your company can process a car insurance cancellation for your policy without notice. However, this would also have been in fine print on your renewal bill that your policy would cancel if you did not pay by the renewal date.

Four, you have a brand new policy and lied on your application. Insurance companies are under no obligation to give you notice of cancellation for fraud.

The best thing to do is to call your insurance company and ask why a car insurance cancellation was processed on your policy.

Q: My car was stolen 2 months ago, why hasn’t my insurance company paid me for it yet?

A: You should probably ask your claims adjuster or their supervisor that question.

Stolen vehicles are always thoroughly investigated because of the high amount of fraud associated with them, so you can thank those people for the delay in your payment. However, 2 months does seem a bit long for an investigation. Like I stated immediately, ask your claims adjusted or their manager as to why no insurance payment has been made yet.

Are they waiting on a document? Are they questioning your coverage? Are they waiting for a police report? Is there anything you can do to assist them in getting your claim processed?

If you can’t get an answer out of either your claims adjuster or their supervisor, go back to your agent and tell them what is going on. Agents will usually step in on your behalf and get to the bottom of why things are going as they should be with a claim for their client.

If your agent is not able to get anywhere, then it is time to contact your state insurance commissioner to file a complaint against your insurance company for no insurance payment being made for your stolen vehicle.

Q: We rented a U-Haul for our move on 7/1/18. The brakes on the U-Haul were very hard to stop. My husband rear-ended me & caused some damage to my car.
We reported the bad brakes to U-Haul & put in a claim on my car.
U-Haul reported to us, since my husbands name is on the car & he was driving the U-Haul when it hit my car, we can not file a claim.
How can that be right?

A: I am not a licensed claims adjuster and this is just my opinion. So I’m going to call bologna on Uhaul right from the start. Uhaul doesn’t want you to pursue this because of the faulty brakes, which are their responsibility to maintain.

Now, there are several items here that can affect this claim:

1. Did you purchase insurance through Uhaul?
2. What type of insurance did you purchase through Uhaul?

If you purchased physical damage coverage only, then no, there is no coverage for your vehicle under the Uhaul policy. That is something that would need to be filed under your own personal insurance to see if there was coverage.  You basically hit yourself, that has nothing to do with Uhaul…they are correct in that aspect. You can’t be liable to yourself.

Now, the good thing is that if you file under your own insurance policy, your adjuster may go after their commercial insurance coverage to get your deductible back through subrogation, due to faulty equipment that you had no duty to maintain. Uhaul is hoping you don’t do this.

If it was me, I would talk to my insurance agent for the best course of action after this car accident with a rental truck.

Q: im looking for gap insurance for my loan I have a 22600 bal due I currantly have gap Im switching insurance company I want to continue covering my loan or if you can refer me to someone who can thank you.

A: That is actually harder done than you would think. Because of the nature of GAP coverage, there are a lot of restrictions on the availability of it. The biggest criteria is that your vehicle has to be under a certain age.

So, if your vehicle is older than a year or two, you are going to be better off staying where you are at if GAP coverage is that important to you.

Also, GAP is never a stand-alone product unless you purchase it through your finance company when you take out your loan. You will need to ask the carrier you are switching to if new GAP coverage is available to you.

Q: I was in a car accident with a rental car and was told my personal car insurance policy would cover a car accident in a rental car. I got a bill from the rental car agency and when I called and asked them what it was for I was told it was for time out of service, which my car insurance company did not pay for.  What is this and why didn’t my car insurance company cover it?

A: Time out of service is the time period the rental car cannot be rented out because it is damaged or being repaired. Car rental agencies lose money when they can’t rent out one of their cars, so they pass the amount of their loss to you. For each day the car cannot be rented, they charge you the rate they would have received.

For example, if a car rents for $20 a day and it takes 10 days to be repaired, they will send you a bill for $200.

Unfortunately, there is no coverage for this time out of service and only the cost of repairs are covered by your insurance if you have a car accident in a rental car.