Sharing my own experience with total loss

Are there any kind of protected arrows at this intersection?  If not, I'm not sure how your light would be green and the other driver be yellow or red?

The difference between a regular green light and a green arrow matters here.

It's been quite a few years so their tactics may have changed but are you sure snake farm can't vary from the script? I hit a deer with my trans am a number of years ago and since it was an 80s relic in the bottom of it's depreciation curve they offered me pennies. I said I don't think so. You're not using the right comparables (v6s, base models, rotten out hulks, etc) and they ended up giving me a different claims guy that said nothing of his position than he "worked with the odd cases" and gave me well over market value for the car (plus let me buy it back for $500). 

Either way, it's nice to hear someone in some authority pushing the idea that employees should be able to free think and make judgement calls when dealing with customers in the interest of satisfaction instead of the bottom line. Thanks.

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

It's really funky and If I could explain it over a phone call I would. But essentially there is a highway merge at this intersection, so my lane heading eastbound would stay green to allow a left turn onto the highway while the westbound lanes turn red to allow that exchange to happen. The westbound lane does have a protected arrow, but that's only to make a U turn from the left lane

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

The difference between a regular green light and a green arrow matters here.

this is the entire answer. Drivers education 101. 

matthewmcl said:

In reply to ExcessKuma :

Yeah, you are still in "Green means Go, only when safe." Glad you are okay. Those wheels look pretty sweet.

Thanks, will probably have to sell to help fund a bodyshop repair 

I think this discussion gets overlooked too frequently and unfortunately only happens after a wreck. Too many folks focus on the monthly insurance bill and not on what the level of service will be after an accident. That's a large part of the reason why I've stuck with USAA. They aren't the absolute cheapest, but the two times I've had to use them they had a more-than-fair check in my hand within a few days. No hassles, no threats or lawyers, no stalling, just the ability to move on with my life.

SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) said:

It was simply the fact they are nothing but process driven and the employees are not paid to think, only to read from a script.

 

Processes are repeatable and predictable, and large companies not only run on them, they swear they live or die by them. Having people think introduces variables. I think processes are great for routine cases, but there should be a clearly defined process for escalation when outliers happen.

Thank you for working to make this happen!

ExcessKuma said:

In reply to Steve_Jones :

It appears to be as it was a rear impact, and the witnesses stated his light was yellow turning red when he hit me

I hope those people appear in court.  Here that might be looked at as failure to yield on your part.  

ExcessKuma said:

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

It's really funky and If I could explain it over a phone call I would. But essentially there is a highway merge at this intersection, so my lane heading eastbound would stay green to allow a left turn onto the highway while the westbound lanes turn red to allow that exchange to happen. The westbound lane does have a protected arrow, but that's only to make a U turn from the left lane

I understand what you're saying.  You were east and other car was west.  WB traffic light turns red to allow the EB traffic left turn arrow to illuminate.  If other car had a yellow, that means your arrow wasn't on and they have right of way.  Unless you have a witness who says the other car flat blew a red light and your arrow was green, you're in a bad spot.  You may be able to argue some comparative negligence if he was speeding and/or based on the fact you nearly cleared, but it would be minimal.

In reply to dculberson :

But my premium is high (according to my wife 3 X higher) and our hurricane-specific deductible is 5X higher. Either or, ok I can see that. 
 

I came in here this time to apologize for side-tracking the thread. I'm a bit stressed right now, and a little on edge waiting for power and water to resume. 
I applaud the OP for actually giving a crap and wanting to make it better for the guy/girl on the other side of the equation. 
shoot me a PM, we've been wanting to shop around for new auto insurance. I'd like to see what your company has to say. 

spitfirebill said:

ExcessKuma said:

In reply to Steve_Jones :

It appears to be as it was a rear impact, and the witnesses stated his light was yellow turning red when he hit me

I hope those people appear in court.  Here that might be looked at as failure to yield on your part.  

It will be failure to yield, he said he did not have a dedicated green arrow.  Without an arrow, as far as you know he has full green, you would have no idea if he has green,  yellow or red.  

DrBoost said:

But my premium is high (according to my wife 3 X higher) and our hurricane-specific deductible is 5X higher. Either or, ok I can see that. 

It wouldn't be either, because either one by itself isn't enough to make up for the risk difference that your house poses vs houses in non-hurricane-prone parts of the country.  There are multiple options for adjusting policies to compensate for increased risk, your company has chosen a blending of two of those options presumably because they think it's the one that is most palatable to their customers.  Perhaps they're wrong and you'd rather have a premium that was the same with a 50X deductible increase, or a deductible that's the same with a 10X premium increase.

Insurance is a numbers-driven, "commodity" business.  They know that consumers make 90% of their insurance shopping decisions based on dollar figures, so they're not just throwing darts at a board to pick the premiums.  They put a huge amount of effort into figuring out the relative risk of various factors so that they can get the premiums to just the right level where they cover costs and make their targeted profit.

There's a reason that the majority of FL homeowners end up with the state funded insurance of last resort.  Many companies, including the one I work for, refuse to write FL property policies as the odds of a heavy loss are too high to make it actually profitable business.  High insurance and/or uninsured loss costs are part of the price of living in FL. 

SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) said:

ExcessKuma said:

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

It's really funky and If I could explain it over a phone call I would. But essentially there is a highway merge at this intersection, so my lane heading eastbound would stay green to allow a left turn onto the highway while the westbound lanes turn red to allow that exchange to happen. The westbound lane does have a protected arrow, but that's only to make a U turn from the left lane

I understand what you're saying.  You were east and other car was west.  WB traffic light turns red to allow the EB traffic left turn arrow to illuminate.  If other car had a yellow, that means your arrow wasn't on and they have right of way.  Unless you have a witness who says the other car flat blew a red light and your arrow was green, you're in a bad spot.  You may be able to argue some comparative negligence if he was speeding and/or based on the fact you nearly cleared, but it would be minimal.

That is my only part I'm missing. I'm not 100% sure if I had a solid green or a green arrow. However the state trooper did talk to me today and told me it was determined who was at fault and they get me the report when they get back to work. Since the trooper didn't mention me getting a citation, I have a pretty good feeling on this one.

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

Maybe I missed something but did Snake Farm pay you out fairly in the end?

Interesting to read about your experience. As mentioned in another thread, I just went through this for my motorcycle accident, also with "Snake Charm" . In my case the valuation was closer to what I would consider satisfactory - it wasn't great, and comparables were half a country away, but they were close to the ballpark and to be frank, I didn't consider it my time that well spent to get a couple more Benjamins out of them.

The part that I found the most problematic was that they really, really, really wanted me to put the claim in online and manage everything online. That's great, especially if you have one arm in a sling and for various reasons and need special keyboards to type properly that don't work with one handed typing even at the best of times. Took a couple of days to even get to talk to someone (promised automated callbacks not happening several times, so in the end I just staid on the line for quite some time to get to talk to someone), which delayed the start of the claim.

The second problem was that they weren't going to send out an adjuster - I had to provide them with photos of the damage myself, despite pointing out that crawling around the bike with a busted collarbone and a potentially cracked rib or three was highly problematic. Took a while until I was able to do that, then the "you'll have the answer back from us in 24h" turned into almost enough days for a follow up call before I got word that they would total the bike. Then I needed to get the title to a UPS drop off that would give me a receipt, they were only able to provide a pre-paid UPS envelope and no other alternatives despite me pointing out that driving 45 minutes each way to a UPS store with a busted shoulder was, shall we say, suboptimal.

What worked really well though was how well they handled the intermediate payouts - both the claim for the damaged helmet and the tow were handled in less than 24h, which in case of the helmet included the money hitting my account. The payout for the bike took longer as I had to follow up on it, but even that was less than a week between the bike getting picked up and the money being in my bank account.

I do get your comments about the procedure driven nature (with what felt very little or no deviation possible) and I pretty much experienced the same. I wasn't massively happy about some of that as it seemed like whoever had designed the process hadn't even taken into account that the policyholder might be somewhat impaired due to injuries from the accident. That surprised me for a motorcycle claim.

(And yes, that probably should've gone into your other thread, sorry).

slefain said:

In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :

Maybe I missed something but did Snake Farm pay you out fairly in the end?

Yep