Our little Toyota Corolla was recently hit while parked on the street. The person who hit it felt very bad and quickly called his insurance and got everything moving quickly to get this resolved. There was no one in the car and the damage was limited to the front driver’s side corner. I figured this was pretty basic and would get fixed with minimal hassle.
Yeah, so much for being an optimist.
The person who hit us has MetLife Auto Insurance and lived outside the state of Utah. To keep things streamlined we agreed to go to a repair shop that MetLife recommended. They had an Enterprise rent-a-car around the corner and indicated they’d paid for a like model rental car. Turns out that wasn’t really true.
While picking up the rental car I was told that the state of Utah allows insurance companies to not pay for some of the rental car fees, namely insurance. So now the rental car was costing me $20+ in insurance a day. A few days later MetLife indicated that Utah state law allowed them to only pay $20/day towards a rental car no matter what kind of car you have. This means a MetLife customer could hit your 7 passenger van and was only required to contribute $20/day towards renting a replacement van. The $20/day doesn’t even cover the comparable Corolla model rental that I’m driving. So now I’m paying even more per day to cover this thing.
The bottom line I got from the MetLife rep was that they were only going to do the absolute minimum required by Utah state law. Doesn’t matter that their client was 100% at fault by hitting our parked car on the street. So far the only good thing is that they seem to be covering all of the repair costs on the Corolla. Though they’ve proven to be such a pain in other areas I won’t be surprised if we get a call from them indicating that they mis-spoke and want us to pay 1/2 of the repair costs.
This whole thing makes me mad at MetLife Auto Insurance for jerking us around. I’m also going to start looking into the Utah laws in this area, there’s no reason why the law should allow auto insurance companies to skip out on some of the costs for covering my expenses while my car is being repaired. That seems to go against the very concept of insurance in the first place.
8 replies on “Don’t Get Hit By Someone With MetLife Auto Insurance In Utah”
Another fault in Utah law is that your insurance is responsible for the first $3000 of repairs. So you will get a hit on your insurance even if it wasn’t your fault.
If I were you I would get your insurance on the horn with MetLife and have your insurance hound them, after all they are there to support you in the event of your car getting hit, right?
The whole thing makes me rather negative on auto insurance. In principle I like the idea of having coverage to take care of accidents, but the implementation seems to avoid actually taking care of accidents.
Unfortunately that is all too true. That is why I would call my insurance provider and make them make MetLife step up and be a better company, at least for this run through.
I don’t know about your policy, but mine allows me to let my insurance provider step in as an advocate for me when another company is giving me the business.
It is worth the call if you ask me. I was hit by a drunk a few years back, he was so whacked out he actually hit my car 3 times.
His insurance tried to pay me about 1/2 of the car’s KBB value, so I called my provider and had them advocate for me. They were able to get full value of my car, and got the guy’s insurance to pay for all the repairs (minus my companies dues).
I was really glad I made the call.
The guy managed to hit you three times? Yikes, talk about coming back for more.
What’s really bad about this experience is that the same car got hit when we lived in California (again, 100% the other persons fault) and had zero problems from Progressive on getting everything taken care of. They paid for every last dime of the rental and didn’t give us any grief. I was so happy that I called them up for a quote to switch my insurance to them. I ended up not switching because they wanted $300 a year more than what I was already paying for the same coverage.
I have Progressive Insurance and I got hit while driving through Utah. I’m not sure about your insurance but I’m required to call my insurance company even when it’s not my fault. I was driving an RX 330 (2006) and my insurance company paid the bill for the rental and the insurance on it.
I have full coverage insurance, not sure if you did or not, so that maybe the difference. Also like Utahcon my insurance company acted like a mediator for me. The lady who it me had esurance but they used that same line on me about Utah law. Bottom line I got my rental fees reimbursed $75 day, and they cut me a check for $20,965 which is the good condition kbb value.
I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s going to take an insurance lawyer to get it figured out for you.
It’s frustrating that companies sometimes can’t be decent enough to just do the right thing from the get go. You’d think it would be cheaper to just have the insurance deal directly with me. I guess the take away from all of this to not bother and let the legal people fight it out and rack up expenses.
I’ve had a like experience, while driving on a street I was hit on the front right corner , by a hi school student[ she had many infactions listed on her license] I was charged my 500 dollar deductible that I had to pay and no car rental was allowed This is in the state of Washington . So you get it in the neck regardless of whose at fault .Loyalty to the Insurance companies is not in my vocabullery, Just an other rip off by big business
I came upon your site in my extreme continuing dissatisfaction with the MetLife office here in Salt Lake City. I have a life insurance policy with them and regret having ever chosen MetLife due to the poor customer service I have experienced. Seems like their office is the only one in the state. Perhaps that is why the manager of that office has been so rude. To me, it is like a snake pit. Now I’m looking elsewhere for my insurance needs.