Looking for thoughts on how to handle car damage?

Ok, I am looking for suggestions on how to handle the following situation.

On Monday my wife was parked in the parking lot at her work and they performed a resurfacing/sealant in the parking lot. She was told that work would be performed, but employee were never notified not to park there and nobody contacted her to move her car. She came out after work to find her car covered in a fine mist of asphalt/tar sealant. The paint now feels like sandpaper and it does not wash off.

We have received 3 quotes to repair the car, and now the building manager who hired the contractor is saying that we will most likely need to submit this as a road hazard claim on our insurance policy. He is contacting the contractor to discuss this more.

The quotes have ranged from $500-1000 to repair, and it does not make sense for me to submit through my insurance and pay a delectable of $500.

Can I submit this through the contractors insurance, assuming they have it? Any other thoughts?

When I worked for a construction company we had people calling a lot with oil getting on their cars or rocks hitting the windshield.
They were always told to submit their claim to their own insurance company and that insurance company could go after the construction company’s insurance carrier.
It didn’t seem right to me but…it was what it was…

311hemi wrote:

We have received 3 quotes to repair the car, and now the building manager who hired the contractor is saying that we will most likely need to submit this as a road hazard claim on our insurance policy. He is contacting the contractor to discuss this more.

The quotes have ranged from $500-1000 to repair, and it does not make sense for me to submit through my insurance and pay a delectable of $500.

IMO both of these are correct.

Based on what I recall from my P&C days, it cost the ins company roughly $1,000 of fixed costs per claim regardless of claim size. Insurers liked to call the small $$ claims “nuisance” claims, usually best not to submit those claims unless you can help it, keeps your claims experience clean for if you really have something bad happen.

That said, unless the contractor steps up and offers to make you whole otherwise (not likely IMO), you’ll likely have to submit a claim through your insurance and have them subrogate through the contractor’s coverage.

Tough spot to be in, hope everything works out for you.

How many others have the same overspray?

Contact your insurance agent. These types of situations are where a good agent is worth her/his weight in gold.

Document the situation thoroughly. Every aspect, who you talked too, dates, logs of the conversations, everything. Thoroughly photograph the car and the damage.

Grouse

None that I have heard of. My wife gets in early before they coned areas off so she was the only car in that area and nobody ever contacted the building management to have the car moved.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Contact your insurance agent. These types of situations are where a good agent is worth her/his weight in gold.

I did and what Mark mentioned above is what she basically told me, which I do understand.

“That said, unless the contractor steps up and offers to make you whole otherwise (not likely IMO), you’ll likely have to submit a claim through your insurance and have them subrogate through the contractor’s coverage.”

I guess I will wait to see what I hear back from the building manager and run it higher up the chain if I don’t like their response. I will also reach out of the contractor and run it up the chain there as well if need be.

Have you tried WD40? I works great for tar spray kicked up from tires on road work.

I have not. I would literally need to spay the entire car with it even it if did work. However it gets resolved, there is a good amount of man hours that will go into it.

Do you know the name of the company that did the work? If so, contact them directly and demand they pay. If you don’t know who they are, ask the building owner.

Yep, I know the name of the company but I am trying to let the property manager resolve it since he is the one we first started communicating with. That will be my next step.

Two of the company’s reps have been CC’d on the email chain discussing this matter.

This happened where i work from a roofinf contractor oversprayed tar on to vehecles . I sent hours in a car wash to no avail. Next day at work contractor had citrus mix in a spray bottle sprayed it on and tar melted right off. Did not affect clear coat.

Several years ago they painted the water tower across the street on a very windy day. All of our vehicles had spots of paint all over them. I had a Dodge Dakota with a vinyl Tonneau cover. The contractor offered to get the vehicles washed. I asked about the Tonneau cover and they said they’d clean it off with Armor-All. Of course of they did that, every piece of dust and dirt would stick to that cover like glue forever… I told her I’d clean the truck up myself, but she was going to buy me a new Tonneau cover. That’s what happened. No insurance involved at all.

SR

311Hemi – I’m an independent insurance agent in the cities, have multiple commercial accounts. There is a good chance the contractors commercial general liability policies will carry a property damage deductible.
If it were my client. I would advise they pay for the repairs outside of filing a claim under their policy. Reasons being – one) deductible probably exceeds repairs based off your estimates, and second) they could potentially see an increase on future renewals due to loss history.
My advice – Contact the contractor with your estimate, explain the situation and tell them you would prefer to avoid getting insurance involved. If they have any understanding of insurance they will gladly oblige.

Don’t discount small claims court. I have used it often and it works. Sometimes, just the threat of it will get things moving, because they know they’ll lose and if you do it right, you will only cost them more money than fixing the problem.

If you go small claims, you can also charge them for lost wages while you are having the car fixed, for missing work to attend small claims, legal fees for consultations about small claims, the actual damage to the vehicle, renting a car while yours is in the shop, the cost of filing the claim and travel related to it.

Suddenly, a $1000 claim has ballooned to $2000 and the laws have teeth. If you win, the sheriff will back up your demand for payment. I did that once and it was fun to hear the guy call me minutes later after the sheriff took the money from his till.

Hopefully you can resolve it, but just the threat of court often helps lube the way.

hand sanitizer might take that right off.

A letter on lawyers letterhead to the contractor company should work. But, that will probably cost $100.

Many companies now offer thru employee benefits the opportunity to purchase legal services and ID theft protection. Several of these same companies also offer these plans to individuals.

Look up LegalShield as an example.

For around $20/month you can have legal services at no additional cost. You never know when you’ll need it and the reason we often don’t pursue issues like this is that lawyers are expensive.

This issue and the other post on Fleet Farm nightmare are examples of when these plans would be extremely helpful.

On Friday I was able to reach an agreement with the contractor and building management company to each pay 1/2 of my co-pay, which is equal to the bid I received to repair the car. I will not be submitting through insurance, but I will need to arrange transportation as they were both adamant about not paying anything towards a rental.