Is the amount you paid for your car covered by full insurance if an uninsured motorist hits you?

Question

A friend was stopped at a light when some idiot hit her car and totalled it! Although, she has full coverage on the car(she just recently finished paying off), the idiot who hit her did not have any insurance! The total she paid on her car was $13K. The insurance company only wants to give her the blue book value of $3000! The situation is even worse because the offending party have no insurance! Is the insurance company trying to rip her off?! What should she do to get back at least close to the total amount she paid for her car?

Answer 1

No, of course not.  The insurance company doesn't care what you PAID.  That's got nothing to do with it.  She's insured against LOSS.  The insurance company doesn't buy you a new Cadillac when you wreck a 1979 T-bird.  They buy you another 1979 T-bird.

If this doesn't seem like a really silly question to you, then you've really missed some very basic logic.

Answer 2

Auto insurance is NOT replacement cost coverage. You can only get what the car is worth (prior to the loss, of course) based on condition, mileage and options. Think about it -- would you give someone five times what a vehicle is worth just because they made a bad deal when they purchased it? Answer: NO.

This is standard procedure and no amount of hard luck stories, crying or temper tantrums will change the value of the car.

Answer 3

Very sorry to hear about your friends mishap. Depending on what specific coverages your friend has or had on her insurance, usually, there is an optional coverage offered to all drivers to protect them against this very incident or circumstance. Protection from uninsured or under-insured motorists is crucial to your overall protection resulting in a higher than normal premium.

Answer 4

here's the deal, K.

An insurance company will only sell you insurance for the things that you *HAVE*.  

Not the things that you want, or the things that you once had.

Then if (when) you lose them, they pay for your *LOSS*, not what you would have lost if you'd had what you want.

Three years ago (or 4 or 5 whatever), your friend *HAD* a car worth $13,000.  If she had totalled it, they woulda paid $13,000.

Last week (or whenever), she lost a car worth $3,000.  So that's what they'll pay.

The cost of insurance ("premium") is based on *the value of what's insured, and *the risk of losing it.

She can replace the car she lost with the $3,000.