There was nothing that teenage me hating paying for more than car insurance. What an absolute waste of money. My car wasn’t expensive, I drove safe, and I was broke as a joke. If you had asked me to cut out any expense I wanted it would certainly be stopped paying for that. The laws of the land demanded otherwise and my parents were certainly not about to let me have a free ride on their insurance. Thankfully I never had to bring my car to the auto body shop.

I’m still grateful for them not letting 16 years old I break the law and get rid of my insurance. It’s the service you hate to pay for and the one you never want to use. The day that you have to use it is already a bad day. No two ways around that.

Using insurance though can be complicated and a complete hassle, especially if you haven’t used it before. (hopefully, it’s the first time.) There’s dealing directly with the auto body shop and then you have to deal with an insurance company who seems completely pissed that you’re daring to use the insurance that you paid for. It’s a headache. Here are 3 steps for using your insurance.

Call the Police

The first thing to do if there’s an accident is to call the police. Doing so is not an admission of guilt but they will do their jobs and make sure that everyone is okay and document the crash, this is something that needs to be done when the accident happens and shouldn’t wait. Then you’ll be able to get a copy of the accident report.

Your insurance will want to see this for a myriad of reasons. They’ll use it evaluate the next move, establish fault, and they may even need it for a court case should it go that far. You really can’t make any headway without the accident report.

Call your insurance

This will be the third group of people to contact. The order that you should always follow after the accident is Police, Loved One, Insurance. You’ll want to exchange the information with the other driver as well and get their information. This will get the ball rolling for having the insurance cover everything but your deductible.

Get the car to an Auto Shop

Assuming you haven’t totaled the vehicle you’ll want to start getting work done to it. You can work with the auto body shop or any mechanic and have them report the costs to the insurance and charge them. All you’ll have to pay is the deductible. Work closely with both places and you’ll find they can give you good instruction for how the whole process works.

Conclusion

We all hope that we don’t have to use our insurance, we don’t have practice with it and don’t want to be in that situation in the first place. Still, there will probably come a day when you have to, so hopefully with these simple tips, you can better navigate the maze of confusion that surrounds the business and get your car fixed at the right auto body shop.