NC Auto Insurance – Your License Tag Is Your Reminder

It’s so easy to take a car off of your car insurance policy, just call your agent and tell them. And when you have signed your title over to the buyer, it seems like you are really finished with the process. But, a cautionary tale her can remind you that under no circumstances should you ever let the new buyer drive off with your tags still on that vehicle. It could ruin you financially.

In NC when you buy a car from someone, even though they have signed the title over to you, the state doesn’t recognize that transaction until the buyer registers the car. And the one thing that will force the new buyer to do this is if he or she doesn’t have any tags to put on the car. Here’s a story that drives this point home.

Someone I know, who was not one of our clients, sold one of his vehicle, a pickup truck, to a friend. He then called his agent and asked them to take the vehicle off of his policy. The buyer of the car drove off with his license plate on the vehicle and then they failed to go to the DMV to register the car in their name and get their own tags. They also failed to add this truck to their personal auto insurance policy. A few weeks later, they loaned the truck back to my friend as he had to pick up a large item from the store. On the way to the store, my friend had a terrible accident which resulted in nearly $100,000 of damages. In this case, he is driving a car, registered in his name, without insurance. But in his mind, he had sold it and he shouldn’t need insurance. As you can imagine, he was held accountable for all of the damages from this accident.

This is an odd story but the same result could have happened if the new buyer’s were driving and had an accident. The real key take away knowledge from this story is that you should never, ever let someone drive away with your tags on your vehicle. It leaves you exposed to losses you cannot control and could ruin you financially.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we work hard to make sure that all of our clients are informed insurance consumers. If we can help you with your auto insurance, your home insurance, or even your business or life insurance, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

The source data for this blog was pulled from information which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Garagekeepers Insurance – How Much Is Enough?

Automotive repair shops and used car dealers both need a garage insurance policy. Included in this policy is a coverage call garagekeepers insurance. In the case of automotive repair shop insurance or body repair insurance, this is protection to cover loss and damages to customers’ cars left with the repair shop. In the case of the auto dealer insurance, this coverage is often referred to as dealers open lot coverage and provides comprehensive and collision protection for the inventory owned by the used car dealer. But how do you as an auto repair shop or body shop owner know how much garage keepers insurance to buy?

In this article I want to stay focused on the repair shop with true garagekeepers insurance and I will leave the dealers open lot question for another blog. Repair shops and body shops are all different in terms of how they deal with customers’ vehicles left with them for repair. Some never need to test drive the cars and some need to do extensive driving. Others are able to keep all vehicles inside their building at night while others may even have to park client cars out on the street. Each situation presents different dangers and exposures to the repair shop owner.

Garagekeepers insurance can be broken down into two coverage elements. One is collision coverage and the other is comprehensive. The collision coverage will pay for losses caused to client vehicles that are damaged by a collision. This happens most often when the car is being test driven. The comprehensive coverage provides protection against, fire, hail, water damage and a host of other losses that can happen to your clients’ cars while they are in your care. So how do you decide how much coverage to buy?

Let’s take collision first. I suggest that you carefully try and understand the worst case scenario for a collision loss to one of your client’s vehicles. Assume that your employee has a total loss with the most valuable car that you would ever work on. That should put you in the ball park of how much coverage you should purchase.

With comprehensive coverage on your garagekeepers coverage, you need to try and imagine the worst case scenario for this type of loss to your clients’ cars. If you keep them inside at night, what would it cost to replace the cars if you had a total fire loss overnight and every customer car in your garage was totaled? If you keep them outside, what amount of damages would be caused by a severe hailstorm or a flood if that is possible in your location? Don’t forget to consider vandalism in your worst case scenarios as well.

Once you have done this, you will need to take the largest of the two numbers that you arrived at and purchase that amount of garagekeepers coverage. The reason is that most insurance companies won’t let you purchase one amount of coverage for collision and another for comprehensive. There are a few companies that will allow this but they are few and far in between.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping owners of auto repair and auto body shops with their insurance needs. We work hard to help all of our clients become informed insurance consumers so that they can make the best decisions when it comes to insuring their businesses. If we can help you with your garage insurance, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at our auto repair and body shop insurance help site.

The source information for this article was pulled from an article which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Teen Driver Insurance – Unraveling The Mysteries of The NC Teen Driver Insurance Rates

Most everyone with children is vaguely aware of it, when their teenagers get licensed, they are going to have to pay a lot more for their NC auto insurance policy. But just how much more and for how long remains a bit of a mystery for a lot of parents. While the ins and outs of getting the best teen driver insurance rates are too much to explore in this blog, I do want to help the reader understand exactly how the inexperienced operator surcharges apply to NC auto insurance policies. Read on to lift the veil of mystery on this issue.

We all know that young drivers have more accidents because they are just not experienced drivers. And as they gain experience, they become better drivers and less likely to be involved in an accident. Also, those teen drivers who have their own cars are also several times more likely to be involved in an accident with that vehicle. These two realities can go a long way toward explaining the rating system in NC for teen drivers.

The extra money that you will pay on your auto insurance policy for your teen driver is called the inexperienced operator surcharge. This surcharge has 6 categories and how much extra you will pay is determined by the category that your child falls into.

The first category asks the question of whether or not your child is a primary operator or an occasional operator of a vehicle. Primary operator simply means that your child is furnished a car of their own to drive. You don’t really have a choice about this as the insurance company will simply take the number of cars on your policy and the number of drivers on your policy and apply a driver to each car. If you have 3 cars and 3 drivers, well then you teen is going to listed as a primary operator. The surcharge for primary operators is about twice that of an occasional operator.

The second category that affects the amount of surcharge on your policy for your teen driver asks the question of how long your child has been licensed. The inexperienced operator surcharges last for 3 years and there are 3 categories, one for each year of driving experience. The NC auto insurance policy rules allow the insurance company to leave your child in their current experience level tier until the policy comes up for renewal. This generally has the effect of forcing you to pay for the surcharges longer than you need to for each tier. There is a way around this and it can save you quite a bit of money. To learn that trick read my blog about The IEO rate loophole.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we want all of our clients to be informed insurance buyers. We specialize in helping families with teen drivers and as such, we have created several tools to help families deal with the safety and insurance issues associated with teen drivers. Visit our teen driver help page or call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 for more help with your young drivers.

The source information for this article can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com

Auto Insurance for Seniors – Find a Senior Friendly Auto Insurance Company You Like and Stay There

With all the commercials that we are barraged with each day telling us how we can save money on our car insurance, there is one group of people that should run as fast as they can from these ads. That is the senior citizens in our society. Insurance companies are out to make a profit and they have found that above a certain age, their profit margins run razor thin to nonexistent. Because of this, if you are a senior citizens, you should know the rules that the insurance companies are playing under and how they can affect you.

Insurance companies are not really allowed to openly discriminate against the elderly when selling a North Carolina auto insurance policy. But they have ways of making sure that they either drive these customers off, or remove the wonderful discounts that they offer to their more profitable age groups. With that in mind, it is wise for anyone approaching age 72, to find an insurance company that they like and are happy with and stay there. There are several insurance companies who have made it their niche market to target the elderly and they will offer senior discounts to senior citizens up to a certain age group. Typically, these companies will also stay true to their elderly clients even as they age into age brackets that would scare the average car insurance company. Also, it is easier to get a company to renew your policy than it is to get one to write you as a new client so staying put with an insurance company that you like once you approach your seventies is a good plan.

Recently we had a client in his early seventies who wanted to cut his auto insurance costs. He responded to an ad and eventually changed his policy to the new company. Unfortunately for him, the company sold him a teaser rate and on the first renewal his rates increased dramatically. He contacted us to see if we could take him back but the company that he was with, although very friendly to senior drivers, has different rules for new policies than they do for renewals. Therefore his rate with the same company he had before was now also increased. We begged him not to switch, knowing that this scenario would surely happen and of course it did. The other collateral damage for this client was his homeowners insurance policy. When he switched his auto insurance, he lost his multi policy discount on the home insurance so that policy went up in price as well. The other insurance company that wrote his auto insurance didn’t insure homes so he couldn’t put those together again to receive the discounts he deserves since he is buying both types of policies.

If you are approaching your seventies and you are not sure if your auto insurance company is a senior friendly type company, please give us a call, toll free at 877-687-7557 and we will do our best to help you understand what you are dealing with. The main message here is that shopping around for the best rates on car insurance is a dangerous bargain for people approaching their seventies. Find an insurance company that you like and trust, and plan to stay there for the duration.

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we want all of our clients to be informed insurance consumers. We work hard to make sure that our clients have the protection that they need at the best possible prices for their home insurance, auto insurance, life insurance and their business insurance. If we can help you with any of your insurance needs, please visit us online at www.ClinardInsurance.com or call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

The source information for this article can be found in its entirety at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.