Sunday, October 4, 2009

Understanding that car insurance is more than a simple quote

Car insurance is mandatory. Everybody driving a car needs to have it. When buying car insurance many people simple ask for a quick quote and go for the cheapest insurance available. This however can prove to be a big mistake.

Car insurance like many other insurance policies is something people do not like to buy and do not like to pay for on a recurring basis. The reason is simple. Insurance is by definition a product that pays back only if god forbid something really bad happens. Thankfully for most people such bad rare events never happen and thus most people feel that all the money they have paid toward their insurance was a waste of money. But for a small group of people those bad rare events do happen and when they need to get paid back from their insurance policy they might find they have been paying for the wrong insurance for many years not being able to now get the benefit they need at their worst time.

Car insurance is relatively simple and within a short time anyone can get educated for its basic concepts. As with any other purchase everybody should pay attention and learn a bit about what they are buying before opting for the cheapest available option. Here are some basics things to know. First insurance is like any other product and the brand name and reputation of the insurer is important. Since you would only be interacting with the insurer service in the future if god forbid something really bad happens the only way to judge if the insurer is good or not is by reading other people experience. Thanks to the Internet nowadays you can relatively easily find information and reviews from other customers. Take the time to read and see what they say. Being able to easily file claims and get paid for your damages is important. Other fine print issues like your ability to choose your own car shop and so on are also very important.

There are however a few parameters in a car insurance that are easy to check and are easy to evaluate. One of those is the limits on the policy payouts. Simply put every car insurance policy puts a limit on how much they would pay per incident no matter what your damages were. The limits set by law for car insurance are very low and since the higher the limit the higher the insurance prices most insurers tend to quote insurance policies that only cover the minimum required payouts. If you choose to buy such insurance you might put yourself in a situation where you are underinsured. In other words if something bad happens like a car accident and the damages are higher than your insurance policy you would have to pay for the difference between the insurance limit and the real damages. In most cases increasing the limits significantly increases the policy in relatively small amounts which makes buying the basic minimum required limit insurance even more unreasonable.

Another thing to check with your car insurance is who and what is covered. The cheapest insurance would only cover damages to you and your car. If for example you hit another car and both your and the other car are damaged the insurance will only cover your car. This can be a real risk as you never know what the other car would be. For example hitting a Ferrari can be very costly if you have no insurance. Another parameter to pay attention to is coverage for uninsured motorists. If you get hit by someone and they have insurance their insurance would pay for the damages. But if you get hit by someone that has no insurance and no money you will find yourself with nobody to ask to pay for your damages. Paying a bit more for your car insurance policy can provide coverage for such cases where if the party hitting you has no insurance your insurance will kick in to cover your damages.

Article Source: http://www.insurancearticle.com

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