Hailstorms damage my car: Pleasant insurance claim experience

My father was traveling back from work to home and it suddenly rained hailstroms. In the night he parked the vehicle and accessed the damage next day.

BHPian ramnaresh_2000 recently shared th is with other enthusiasts.

My father's 4 months old Grand i10 Nios was hit by hailstroms on 18th Mar'23 in my hometown. My father was traveling back from work to home and it suddenly rained hailstroms. In the night he parked the vehicle and accessed the damage next day.

He called me with disappointment and shared pics on Whatsapp. I could count almost 40 dents from the pics and videos he shared. I visited my hometown the weekend and the damage was far worse than pictures..

He was clueless and said let's get it fully painted if it gets any major scratches later. I then asked him to claim insurance, he was not sure and said this is not covered. A quick google search reveals otherwise, it is covered as part of comprehensive cover.

I quickly booked an appointment in Fusion Hyundai, Hyderabad for insurance claim. I was assigned SA within minutes. He was not 100% sure if this will be covered by insurance and they already had a new Creta waiting for approval which had similar damages. I pressed strongly and said it has to be covered and I will escalate to IRDAI if required.

Claim was made, surveyor visited the next day and asked for below:

• A letter requesting to consider for claim as the incident occurred 8 days back (As per him any claim has to be made within 7 days of incident)
• Any videos which we took during the incident (we had none)
• Paper clipping or news article about hailstrom on the specified date
• Any other videos of hailstrom from same region

Submitted everything apart from live video. The claim was made, and the wait started. Service center claimed 81k from insurance company, they negotiated to 51k plus 1k for claiming which we had to pay. 1200 for teflon and 1200 for 3M internal cleaning.

They got approval for 51k. The work started and the SA shared regular updates via Whatsapp. The service center took 3 days to complete the job (impressive). All parts apart from bumpers and lower part of doors were re-painted.

I will let the pictures do the talking.

Dents: Win prizes for guessing the exact count of dents:

Work in progress:

Final output:

Bill breakup:

Lessons learned:

• Always try to claim the insurance on the same day when the incident occurred
• If in doubt if it is covered in insurance or not, still make the claim, at the max they will reject it
• In case of unfortunate incidents like hailstorm etc, always take a video and pictures when the incident occurs
• Keep a copy of news articles to share with insurance company
• 100% dents were not covered. A keen eye would pickup a few dents. Service center claimed only 90% would be removed and minute dents are hard to remove and will be filled with putty, something which we have to live with.

Total process took around 2 weeks. Well done Fusion Hyundai and Universal Sampo. You earned my respects and a lifelong loyal customer.

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