How Does the Insurance Adjuster Determine the Value of Damages?

Once you’ve reached the insurance company, the next step they will do is they will send out an adjuster to estimate what the damage was to your vehicle to determine whether or not it’s repairable or whether or not it is actually a total loss. If you disagree with what the adjuster believes the value of your property is or the damages, you’re free to either go online, research, try to find some different similar vehicles and what they’re selling for. Also keep in mind, you could be entitled to something called diminished value. It’s something that adjusters rarely will tell you you have a right to, but if your vehicle is repaired, the perceived value of that vehicle after it’s repaired is probably less than a car that was never in a crash at all, and you’re entitled to that difference as well as compensation. So if you’ve got any questions, feel free to call our office about that. We can certainly give you some good guidance there. But keep in mind that you may also have some rights to some rental car or what we call total loss as well when your car’s being repaired. So if your car is being repaired, you should be entitled to money to rent a car during that time. If you choose not to rent a car, you still could be entitled to the same dollar value. So if you chose to rent a car, you could have. I hope that answers some of your questions in terms of assessing damage, but that’s a very important part, obviously of the process.