GREENSBORO, N.C. — What is that pelting sound? Hail, smacking the side of the house, the walkway, and maybe your car!
Parts of the Triad had hail come through Sunday night, which means some folks may be dealing with damage today.
Hail dents in a car can often be easily seen, but sometimes,
they can be a little harder to spot, and you only catch the dents when you look at the car a certain way.
Whether it’s big damage or just a hard-to-see dent, it's damage and you may be thinking it's time to call your insurance company.
Does insurance pay for hail damage to your car?
The answer is yes if you have the right kind of coverage.
“Comprehensive coverage is really for acts of nature things like hail damage hitting an animal lightning flood a limb falling on it,” said Christopher Cook of Alliance Insurance Services.
If you do not have comprehensive coverage, the fix comes out of your pocket.
Now, what about your roof? Homeowners insurance covers anything caused by wind, lightning, fire, or hail damage.
“Look for damage to your shingles that will show up as kind of a black spot on your asphalt shingle. Any slate shingle would have cracks,” said Cook.
If you think you had hail damage, you call your insurance company and they send out an adjuster.
A hail storm had me going through this process last year. Here are my tricks for navigating the process:
When you call your insurance company they're going to ask you when the damage happened and how. Your insurance company sends out an adjuster and they write up a report on the damage they see.
In my case, the first adjustor didn't think there was as much damage as the roofer I had called. So what do you do in that situation? I had to take my own 2 Wants To Know advice.
I asked for a second adjuster to look at it. It's not being a problem consumer, it's being a wise consumer.
You can get a quote from a roofer before or after the insurance adjuster comes out. The timing isn't as important as these guidelines.
Get everything in writing: the full price, the materials, the estimated time frame of how long it will take
Get quotes from three different companies is recommended
Check their score on the BBB website.
Don't pay in full up-front. I use the third rule, a third up-front, a third when they start the project, and a third when they're done.
Don’t pay in cash. It’s nearly impossible to get it back if there is a problem.