After you’ve been injured in an accident that was someone else’s fault, you reasonably expect the insurance company to treat you fairly. Insurance companies lure customers in with their heartwarming commercials and promise to treat them like family. But after you’re injured, they’re your adversary. Their interests inherently oppose yours: they want to protect their profit margins, while you want to recover as much compensation as possible to pay for all your unexpected costs. Our San Antonio personal injury lawyer can help you when dealing with insurance adjuster and companies.
Here are some tactics insurance companies may use to devalue your claims:
Delaying Your Claim
Insurance companies know that time is money when dealing with personal injury victims. Every day, your claim is delayed, your bills pile up, and you miss more work, so you don’t have the money you need to pay for life’s necessities. Insurance companies know the financial struggles that accidents can have on victims and try exploiting them to devalue claims. By failing to return phone calls, investigate the accident, or negotiate in good faith, they are hoping that you will get frustrated with the process and accept any offer they make or drop your claim altogether.
Making a Fast Offer
Instead of delaying your claim, other insurance companies try to quickly dispose of claims by offering low settlements at the very beginning of a case. They hope that you will accept the offer before you realize the full extent of your injuries or the value of your San Antonio car accident claim.
Demanding a Recorded Statement
Many insurance companies will insist on giving them a recorded statement to “process a claim.” In reality, this tactic is engineered to find information to use against you to deny or minimize the value of your claim. Insurance adjusters are trained to twist the words of accident victims, such as getting them to agree they were partially at fault for the accident or not seriously injured.
Asking for Medical Record Authorizations
Another tricky tactic insurance companies use to try to devalue your claim is asking for medical record authorizations. Insurance agents may say they need you to sign the form so they can get your medical records and see how much they owe for your bills. However, they often request blanket medical authorizations, which allow them to pull up years-old records and try to find any pre-existing injury or condition to blame your current injuries on.
Asking You to Sign Things
Insurance companies may send you papers, instructing you to sign them. However, you should not sign anything from an insurance company without legal representation. You could be signing away your right to receive full compensation for your injuries.
Blaming You for the Accident
The insurance adjuster will try to pin the accident on you. This may allow them to deny your claim in its entirety or to reduce your damages by the degree of fault they assign you.
Pressuring You Not to Hire a Lawyer
Some insurance companies are so brazen to suggest that you don’t need a San Antonio truck accident lawyer and that you can’t afford one. It’s never as clear as to when you need a lawyer as when someone is trying to convince you that you don’t need one. The truth is that most personal injury victims who have a lawyer receive larger settlements, even when considering their legal fees. And you don’t have to pay them until you recover compensation, so it’s in your best interest to speak to one. Call George Salinas Injury Lawyers today so we can protect you from these insurance tactics.