
Quoting
jujuface
My question involves an injury that occurred in the state of: Virginia (Fairfax County)
I was rear ended while sitting at a light in my 2006 Nissan Murano. The damage was mostly confined to the bumper and one tail light, however there were also some minor scratches on my right quarter panel. The issue is this was the second time I've been hit in two weeks and I hadn't had a chance to fix the prior damage yet. The prior damage was from a hit and run in a parking lot that my insurance ended up covering by sending me a check. It left some deep gashes on my right door and some scratches on my quarter panel.
After talking to Ameriprise (insurance of the driver who rear ended me) I got an estimate from a shop for the entirety of the damage on my car and sent it to them (including the prior damage). Since there is damage on the quarter panel that is from both incidents, I wasn't sure how it would be handled and just thought I'd let them figure it out. I wanted an estimate for the total damage anyway because I wanted to get all the work done at once. Today I got a call saying that they made adjustments to the estimate and would not be covering any of the damage on the quarter panel or door and that they would be using aftermarket parts.
So I have a couple questions here, first do they have any right not to cover the scratches on my quarter panel caused by their driver just because there was prior damage on the same panel? Second off, how did they even know that the prior damage was unrelated? Unless they contacted my insurance company and asked about it, there was no way they could have known just by looking at the pictures. I was expecting a call from them once they received the estimate to figure out how they would handle this, but instead they went ahead and made changes to the estimate to their liking and mailed a check out for God knows how much (I haven't received the check yet).