I bought a new truck in 2009. A few months later (November 2009) my truck was egg'd and somehow developed a deep scratch in the vicinity of where it was it was struck with eggs. I filed a police report and talked to the insurance company before ultimately deciding not to follow through with the claim. A repair estimate came in at $800, and I have a $250 deductible. I deduced that if I was going to get it fixed, I'd just pay out of pocket rather than risk having my insurance go up. I've since learned that this reasoning is faulty and just the act of opening a claim is enough to screw you.
Fast forward to this weekend. My truck is parked in my driveway apparently unlocked. Someone slashes a tire on a friend's vehicle parked on the road and then gets into my truck and smashes a touch screen in my dash. Nothing is stolen. Now this isn't any old touch screen. I have a computer in my truck and this is a top of the line optically bonded transflective (daylight readable) display. The display was mounted in my dash in essentially the same opening where the factory nav display would be if I had one (I have a metra double din dash kit and the screen is was permanently mounted behind the opening).
So I file another police report and make another call to Geico. After explaining everything to them, they ask if it was aftermarket. I tell them yes, and the guy asks me if I added it to my policy. No. Then he tells me that it more than likely won't be covered. I inform him that it was installed in a factory location, but apparently with Geico that doesn't matter. Nonetheless, he said an adjuster would look at it to see if there is anything they could do. At this point, I'm pretty pissed. Since I haven't yet come to a point where I could find nothing better to do with $800 then to get a scratch fixed, I have him reopen my old claim.
I'm meeting with the adjuster on Wednesday morning to go over both issues. Does anyone have any advice on how I could possibly get the screen covered? Did I screw myself by opening my old claim? Why in the hell do I even have comprehensive insurance?
Fast forward to this weekend. My truck is parked in my driveway apparently unlocked. Someone slashes a tire on a friend's vehicle parked on the road and then gets into my truck and smashes a touch screen in my dash. Nothing is stolen. Now this isn't any old touch screen. I have a computer in my truck and this is a top of the line optically bonded transflective (daylight readable) display. The display was mounted in my dash in essentially the same opening where the factory nav display would be if I had one (I have a metra double din dash kit and the screen is was permanently mounted behind the opening).
So I file another police report and make another call to Geico. After explaining everything to them, they ask if it was aftermarket. I tell them yes, and the guy asks me if I added it to my policy. No. Then he tells me that it more than likely won't be covered. I inform him that it was installed in a factory location, but apparently with Geico that doesn't matter. Nonetheless, he said an adjuster would look at it to see if there is anything they could do. At this point, I'm pretty pissed. Since I haven't yet come to a point where I could find nothing better to do with $800 then to get a scratch fixed, I have him reopen my old claim.
I'm meeting with the adjuster on Wednesday morning to go over both issues. Does anyone have any advice on how I could possibly get the screen covered? Did I screw myself by opening my old claim? Why in the hell do I even have comprehensive insurance?