Tactics Car Insurance Companies Use to Devalue or Deny Valid Claims

After a car accident in Houston or elsewhere, you may feel especially vulnerable and anxious about what comes next. How will you support your family while dealing with painful injuries, treatments, and recovery time? Will your medical insurance cover your hospital bills or will you owe a large deductible?

If the accident was the fault of another driver’s negligence, you shouldn’t have to be left responsible for the economic consequences as well as the physical ones—your “damages” in a car accident claim.

Unfortunately, insurance companies often use predictable tactics to protect their profits. It’s always best to seek an experienced car accident attorney to represent you in your claim. A practiced attorney anticipates and counteracts the common methods insurance adjusters use to delay, deny, or undervalue a claim.

Calling Very Soon After Your Car Accident

The first insurance company tactic to be wary of is an early settlement offer. Often, the insurance company of the at-fault party in a car accident calls a victim very soon after the accident before they know the full extent of their damages like medical expenses and lost income.

Typically, this is a lowball settlement offer in exchange for signing away the right to file a lawsuit. The insurer counts on an overwhelmed, vulnerable injury victim who may reach out for any help offered rather than waiting for the full compensation they deserve.

Calling on a Recorded Line and Using Your Remarks Against You

Insurance companies often call injury victims on recorded lines. Their compassionate tones and small talk may lead the victim into making casual remarks the adjuster later takes out of context to use against them as admissions of fault. They may also use what the victim didn’t say against them.

For instance, they may ask extensively about the victim’s broken arm but not about their knee injury, then later claim the knee injury didn’t happen in the accident because the victim didn’t mention it during the phone call.

Asking For Medical Authorization

Insurance adjusters may ask for medical authorization to examine the medical report of the victim’s injury. By giving them the authorization, they also have access to the injury victim’s entire medical history. Often they comb through the medical history and find pre-existing conditions or past injuries they then claim are the true cause of the victim’s symptoms instead of the car accident.

Disputing Your Doctor’s Treatment Recommendations

When an injury victim makes a claim for past or future medical expenses related to their car accident injury, insurers may deny the claim by arguing that the treatment the doctor recommended isn’t necessary for the injury. They may also dispute the severity of injuries based on minimal damage to the injury victim’s vehicle.

Combing Through an Injury Victim’s Social Media Accounts

It’s always best to avoid posting or commenting on social media until a car accident claim is completely resolved. Insurance adjusters routinely scour social media posts to “catch” an injury victim looking fit and healthy, even if they were actually bravely smiling through their pain. They may also use comments out of context such as a victim posting, “I had a good day” as proof that they aren’t as injured as they claim.

Why Hire a Car Accident Attorney?

Insurance companies attract clients through glossy ads and compassionate promises; however, like all private businesses, they exist to make profits, even if it comes at an injury victim’s expense. As a car accident victim, it’s always best to seek an experienced car accident attorney to represent you in your claim and then direct all communication with insurance companies to your lawyer.