Stick a Fork in Me

Well kids, it is time for another edition of "Insurance Lessons with Michael". This is where I take a portion of my day to share basic insurance principles with you as to prevent future distress on the part of yourself, and/or your insurance agent. Today's lesson involves the rules of liability. You carry liability on your policy to protect yourself for when you are at fault for an accident. It's basically coverage for everyone else on the road. You carry comprehensive and collision to protect yourself for when your own vehicle is damaged. Here is the important lesson for the day... You CANNOT be held liable for damaging your own property.

Here is an example. A husband and wife come into my office wanting to make a claim. Let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Angryton. Mrs. Angryton was backing out of the garage and she collided with their other car that was sitting in the driveway. Thus making Mr. Angryton a little angrier than usual. Now class, based on today's lesson... would this be one claim filed under one vehicle, or would this be two separate claims, one filed under each policy? ........ Yes! This would be TWO separate claims. One filed under each policy under the collision coverage.

Well, as you can imagine, this did not go over well with the Angrytons. They wanted the one car's liability coverage to cover their other car. They also wanted to avoid paying two separate deductibles and having two claims on their record. I certainly understand why they would want this, but this is just not how insurance works. They didn't believe me and insisted on coming in and having me pull out the policy and showing them where owned vehicles were excluded from liability coverage.

So why do we have this rule? I'm glad you asked! I proceeded to explain the following to the Angrytons. Without this rule, someone could decide that they wanted a new bumper on their car and instead of actually paying for one, they would just purposely hit it with their other car and get it paid for by insurance! Or, they could really want a new garage door and decide to just let insurance buy them one instead and back into accidentally on purpose. See what I mean?

"But we would never do that" Mr. Angryton exclaimed. I completely understand that, but that doesn't make you exempt from the rules. Do you expect me to apply this rule to some and not to others? That's why we have rules! They provide order! Without rules we might as well all be monkeys. And then we would just be throwing our poop at each other and the whole system begins to break down.

So the story ends with the Angrytons unhappily submitting to my authority. Upon leaving, a very big scary looking and unhappy Mr. Angryton asks this. "Is there anything ELSE in this policy that I need to know that is going to make me want to stab you in the face with a fork"? No smile. No hint of kidding. This dude was pissed.

Really sir? I understand you are frustrated but ridiculous threats will get you nowhere. He even went a little further and pointed out the fact that he had me cornered in my little cubicle. Straight up classy.

So if you happen to see a four pronged scar anywhere on my face, just know that it's been a bad day. One bonus lesson that I will leave you with... be nice to your insurance person. He/she is just the messenger and while we LOVE dealing with angry people all day, it is most definitely not the highlight of our day.