Car Insurance- Get them involved or Don't get them involved?

Just to be clear, lying to the insurance company = insurance fraud. So by asking if you should lie, you were asking about committing fraud.

Do. Not. Lie. to the insurance company. You will almost certainly get caught and the penalties for doing so are significantly higher than whatever you hope to save. They have professional accident assessors whose job it is to look at car accidents and who know way better than you or I what a three-month-old accident looks like vs. a three-year-old one. Either you take the hit on your insurance or you pay for it out of pocket.

Between finding a body shop, scheduling a time for them to look at the damage, getting an estimate and then finding an opening in their schedule to have the work performed, I think it's unlikely this will all be done inside of 8 days. Hoping to handle it through insurance (even setting aside the delay and fraud issues) inside of that time frame seems extremely improbable. It may feel like an emergency to you because you're about to move, but it's not an emergency to anyone else. So, my guess is you devise a Plan B for the move and deal with the car damage some other time or not at all.

This is not a morality question, it is a (partly) criminal question. Lying about the accident is insurance fraud, period. I hope that the discussion about that possibility ends here. Do not go down that path. We don't want to pay for the repairs out of pocket and also don't want our insurance rates to go up come crazy amount. These options are not compatible. Insurance providers must recover the costs of repairs some way or another. They do so by either denying coverage (so they don't incur costs) or by increasing the cost of your coverage to compensate or by increasing the costs of their entire pool of covered members. The likely result is some combination of the three options, with the first two options dominating. Insurance companies don't like to increase the rates of the entire pool because it makes their rates less competitive. The short version of this is: don't expect to insure risks that you can pay out of pocket. You should be able to pay this out of pocket or if you can't, to be able to rent a truck instead of using the hatchback. Do we bite the other bullet and shell out the bucks Yep, that's my opinion. The insurance contracts I've read require you to notify the insurer promptly of any damage. You didn't do that. As a result, I suspect your insurer would have no requirement to cover you, so they will correspondingly decline to cover you. Insurance companies don't make money by providing free coverage. Again, it goes back to the fact that someone has to pay for the coverage, and it's to the insurer's benefit to make that person be you. The reason I'm suggesting not telling your insurer is that I believe the chances of your insurer covering you are so close to zero that the definite likelihood of your insurer using this accident against you outweighs the chance of coverage. The insurer keeps track of all accidents regardless of what the insurer does about them, so the accident would possibly be used as negative information indicating to your insurer that you are a poor risk. As a result, your insurance rates might go up without any corresponding benefit to you.

This: I'm not planing on committing insurance fraud!! No way!! Does not compute with this: Even if we did decide to lie we don't know which lies would set things in our favor Lying = insurance fraud.

1. You can call Geico and say "I just want to understand my policy better. How long do I have after an accident to report a claim" If they ask questions, repeat, "I just want to understand my policy" They should be able to give a straightforward answer and then you won't have to guess. 2. Agree with jon1270 that having your car fixed in less than a week is optimistic - I would try to get into a body shop today to find out what it would cost and how soon it can get done. Again, better to ask and know than to guess.

Bite the other bullet and shell out the bucks. You can ask the repair shop to do the minimum to make the door work without worrying what it looks like. Also, if they can get it open but not fix the latch/lock, can you make do using bungee cords while you move? You could then tie it down with regular rope after you move when you don't need to open and close it very often.

If you don't have comprehensive, it won't be covered anyhow. Read your policy to find out how long you have to report an accident. Trying to get a claim through your insurance company and get body work done on your car before you move in 8 days is madness. Madness! You could well end up spending 10 hours dealing with this. Between the deductible and the likely increase in rates you'd have if you were able to claim this, it's likely to be FAR cheaper to rent a car with a working hatchback, or to not move anything that won't fit through the car doors. Another option would be to have your larger items shipped freight. If you have comprehensive, it's probably a waste of money on a car more than 3 years old with body damage, you might be able to save thousands a year by dropping it.

renting a car, van, or truck may be cheaper than getting your car fixed.