"You owe us a $1,000?"

That was one of the opening lines of the rep from one of my old insurance companies.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, trying to control my rapidly rising anger.

"I have a letter here that states you have received $1,000 from the other party's insurance company for the damages to your car and we are entitled to that money."

"The $1,000 was for the medical cost and not the car and you have not paid anything for that," I objected.

The conversation went down from there and finally I said, "Fine! Send me a copy of that letter that indicates I had received $1,000 for the damages to my car and I will provide the information I have."

The letter never came. Instead my insurance was canceled.

These particular series of events had started with a seven car collision. Some one had lost control of his better judgment, not to mention his eyesight and didn't notice that the freeway had turned into a parking lot. He rammed into the car in front of him so hard that it pushed that car into five other cars. My wife's car was number 4 or 5 and still that car's trunk was half way into the back seat.

I was young and so was my wife. In this case young was not a good thing sine it meant being inexperienced and somewhat naive. My wife had suffered a whiplash and we saw our personal physician who released her saying it was nothing serious. When the other guy's insurance company contacted us, we told them that the only damage was to the car. They said fine, why don't we send you a release form and a $1,000 for the medial bills that is not related to the damage to the car and we will deal with your insurance company directly to have your car fixed.

I said that we have medical insurance and I don't see how we can pile up $1,000 out of pocket cost. The agent replied that the insurance deductible and co-payment and other things may come up. I thought this is great. These guys really care. So we accepted the payment and signed the release forms.

That decision had the following consequences.

First, the simple whiplash was not so simple and I don't want to get into the details of the type of costs we went through since most of the treatments were not covered by our medical insurance provider.

Second, a deal was struck to have my car "repaired." For couple of years that I kept the car after that, I spent hundreds of dollars on various repair costs because as a mechanic put it, the car's chassis was damaged and never repaired. Remember that my insurance was canceled and I didn't know at the time how to recover my cost.

Third, over 15 years later, I still have a negative outlook on the process of insurance claim that I attribute to that incident and several others like it. My solution, since I can afford it now, is to always have my attorney review the situation with me before I sign anything. What about those who can barely afford insurance premium payments?

Experiences like mine are not unique and I hope these series of articles reach the insured, the insurance companies and the insurance agents to provide their point of view and their challenges and solutions. Please log into my blog and tell me your story and your side of the story.



In part two of this series of articles, I will share other steps I had taken in the past to find reliable insurance companies. Since many individuals attribute insurance to gambling and bad luck, a view I do not share, I like to leave you with a proverb from Henry Miller.

"We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior."