North Carolina Used Car Dealers – The Garage Insurance Policy That You Started With May Not Be The Right One Today.

North Carolina used car dealers insurance starts with the garage insurance policy. Many new start ups find their way to an agent who is able to help them set up their garage policy and the begin selling cars. And for many used car dealers, they just pay their renewal premiums each year without realizing that time is on their side. You see, because of a law in North Carolina that requires insurance companies to offer you a policy when you ask for a quote, there is a two tiered system of policies in North Carolina. If you haven’t checked lately, you might be in the high risk rate class and not even realize that you are paying too much for your garage liability dealers insurance policy.

Since NC is a mandatory insurance state, all dealers who ask for an auto insurance quote must be offered coverage. For this reason, most insurance companies can write a dealers policy but if they don’t specialize in used car dealers insurance, they will simply place your garage insurance policy through the state reinsurance facility. This means you will have to pay the highest possible rate and you will face limited choices on how much liability insurance you can purchase. And last of all, this market of last resort doesn’t offer you any dealers open lot coverage so you won’t be able to purchase comprehensive and collision insurance on your inventory.

Even insurance companies who specialize in used car dealers insurance in North Carolina may still place your policy in the higher rated North Carolina reinsurance facility. Why would they do this? Well there are several reasons and the reasons certainly change over time. As I write this we are seeing many dealers forced to offer buy here, pay here financing in order to sell their cars. The insurance companies don’t like this as it increases the chances that the dealer will be involved in repossessing a vehicle and the claims and losses that might be associated with that activity. So, since they have to offer insurance at some price to those that call, guess what, if you do buy here, pay here financing, you may find yourself in the NC reinsurance facility.

Another reason dealers end up in the facility pool with its higher rates is that they simply have not been in business long enough to develop a track record that helps the insurance company feel comfortable with their business practices. Some companies require as much as 3 years experience before they will move a dealer into their preferred rates policy. I have also seen this problem apply to dealers who wholesale vehicles and never take title to or possession of the vehicles they are selling.

If you are a dealer who used to do on site financing, wholesale, or if you simply bought your current policy when you had less than 3 years in business, there is a good chance that you might now qualify for better coverage at lower rates. You might not be able to find these preferred policies from your current agent though. The reason for this is that insurance for used car dealers is a specialty market and most agents just don’t have access to the preferred policies for used car dealers.

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in used car dealers and we insure over 300 dealerships across 5 different states. If we can help you with an insurance second opinion on your garage insurance, or if you would like for us to give you a quote on your dealership insurance, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.TheAutoDealersHelper.com

The source information for this article can be found among the many articles at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

You Just Erased Your Memory Card – Relax, All Is Not Lost

Uh Oh, I just accidentally erased my photos on my memory card. I had this experience recently and I want you to know that you can probably still recover your photos. In my case my wife and I had driven over to my daughter’s friend’s house where 7 teenage couples were gathered in full evening dress for their prom. An entire row of parents stood in front of the kids for 15 minutes cameras clicking and flashes going off. If you have had teenagers you probably know the ritual. So wiping out these photos is pretty bad. You’re not going to get those teenage boys to dress up in suits and stand in front of the camera again for you. But if you know what to do and in the right order, you can usually recover your lost photos.

A week or so later my came to me distraught that she had accidentally erased all the photos on her camera memory card, including these precious prom photos. I searched the internet and found to my surprise that these photos were not lost forever.

To understand why you just need to understand how the memory space on these cards works. Generally, when you delete a photo or file from a memory card, the space is made available for another photo or file to be stored there. But, until you take more photos to cover over this space, you can still recover those deleted files and photos. To do so, you will need to purchase a software program on the internet and download it to your computer. There are many services out there and below I have listed some web sites that I found that sell these programs. The one I used was Card Recovery which is the first on this list but you may find one that does the job better and is cheaper. In our case we saved the prom photos and since that time my daughter has made the same mistake with her camera memory card and she was astonished that Dad could miraculously save the day for her. It’s good to be the hero every now and again, especially with teenagers.

Here are a few sites that can help you recover erased files from a memory disk.

www.CardRecovery.com
www.pctools.com
http://www.powerdatarecovery.com

At Clinard insurance we love to help make our client heroes and this is why we offer this type of information. You can find our full lifestyle tips and tricks blog online at http://www.clinardinsurance.com/lifestyle/tabid/32965/default.aspx . If you would like any help at all with your insurance policies, please call us toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at http://www.ClinardInsurance.com. We can give you expert help with your home insurance, your auto insurance, your life insurance or even you business insurance coverage. Whether you are a small contractor or a used car dealer or a auto repair shop owner or vitually any other business, you can find the help you need at Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
The source information for this article was pulled from the Clinard Insurance Group tips and tricks blog.

Coupon Clipping Is Going High Tech, Forget About Scissors

With the recession in full swing, most of us are looking for ways to save a little money. And one of the old tried and true methods, coupons, is getting a real makeover.

These days you can scour the internet for coupons before you go shopping and print them out on your printer, or better yet, have them added to your grocery store shopping card or your smart phone.

Currently online coupons account for 1% of all coupons offered nationwide, but their use is growing at an astronomical rate. Manufacturers love them because they have a 13% redemption rate compared to just 1% for printed coupons. And now large grocery chains are getting in on the act. In January, Kroger announced that it would be rolling its free text messaging coupon program out nationally. Each Sunday, members enrolled in this program can view coupons on their phone and click on the ones that they want added to their Kroger loyalty card. When they purchase the product in the coupon, the register automatically applies the coupon to that sale.

If you still like to put your hands on the coupons, try www.coupons.com, a site that lets you print out online coupons from large food manufacturers and national grocery chains. Last year people printed coupons worth over $300 million from this site alone.

Word to the wise. Coupon deals have got chintzier over the past several decades. In 1990 the average expiration date on coupons was 4.9 months, while the average now is only 2.5 months. Also, in 1995 only 13% of coupons required shoppers to purchase two or more items while in 2008 that number jumped up to 27%.

Check with your local grocery store chain to see what types of paperless coupon options they are offering. You just might find an easy way to get your piece of that $300 million pie.

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we want to help our clients and others as much as possible. If you would like help with your insurance policies, please give us a call, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.clinardinsurance.com. We specialize in personalized insurance programs for your auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance as well as business insurance for used car dealers, garage and repair shops, small contractors and other small businesses. We’d love to help you, please give us a call.


The source information for this article was pulled from the Clinard Insurance Group tips and tricks blog.

Used Car Dealers Insurance – Watch Those Limits

At Clinard Insurance Group we specialize in helping Used Car Dealers with their Garage Liability and Dealer Open Lot Insurance Coverages. We insure over 300 dealers in NC, SC, GA, TN and VA. With that kind of exposure to this industry, we see the policies that a lot of dealers have before they come to us and we see some real messes. One of the scariest mistakes dealers make when buying garage liability insurance is how they set up their liability limits.

Let’s face it, garage liability insurance is a real specialty product. This is an insurance policy written for just one industry. As a result, most agencies only have a couple of these types of policies on the books, if any, and they rarely understand the form completely. If you are a used car dealer and you are trusting your business to an agent who doesn’t currently handle 25 or more dealers just like you, then chances are you are not using a specialist and this could cost you big in many ways. Just because an insurance agent can write the insurance for your dealership doesn’t mean her or she really understands what he or she is doing.

So now what is the liability limit trap? Well in some states, and North Carolina is a classic example, the state government has set up a reinsurance facility. This is a place of last resort where people with bad driving records can still get insurance. The reason this is a problem for dealers is that most insurance companies don’t understand used car dealers and don’t want to insure them. They just assume that these dealers are letting everyone and anyone drive around with the “moveable” dealer tag. They don’t understand your business so they don’t want to write you. So if you call an agent that doesn’t specialize in car dealers and ask him for a quote, the only option he may have for insuring your dealership is the reinsurance facility. So what?

Well here’s the problem. Most of these reinsurance facilities, and NC is one of them, have a very low highest liability limit available. In NC that is $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident bodily injury. So that is all that you could buy from this inexperienced agent. And if you didn’t know better you might believe that this is all you need or all you could ever buy. Nothing could be further from the truth. These limits are very low in terms of the types of claims I have seen incurred by auto dealers. As a dealer, you need to more accurately assess exactly how much insurance you need and then be able to purchase the liability limits that will protect you, your business, and your personal and family assets.

If you are looking for an insurance agent that understands how to insure used car dealers and will take the time to listen to you and help you develop an insurance program that meets your needs and does so for the lowest possible cost, then I suggest you call Clinard Insurance Group, toll free, at 877-687-7557, or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

The source information from this article was pulled from an article at www.insuranceanswerguy.com.