USAA review: USAA Auto Insurance Claim

My wife, Melissa, and I leased a brand new Volkswagen ID.4 in July. She left it in an overnight airport parking lot and someone scratched up the right side rear door while it was parked there. As soon as we noticed it we called USAA. Even though we were upset at the damage to a brand new car I didn’t worry because from my previous experience with USAA claims, I knew it would be a breeze to file the claim and get our car fixed. I was so wrong!

We got the process started with an agent who assured us it would be an easy

process and would fall under our comprehensive coverage since it was not a collision. We felt that should be the case as well. Melissa quickly took pictures of the damage and uploaded them to the USAA website and we thought we were on our way to getting it fixed. A few days later we started getting notices saying we hadn’t uploaded any pictures and processing of the claim couldn’t go any further without that. She then tried again and even used whatever process you now have to upload pictures through the mobile app. I guess that didn’t work either-even though we thought it did. The same thing happened again. We got more messages telling us we hadn’t uploaded pictures again. We also had a few questions at this point and it seemed we had been passed to another agent, Patricia, to process our claim. We left a few messages for her and didn’t get a response for several days. She finally got back to us and instructed Melissa on how to upload pictures again in the app. This time it did go through. She informed us that USAA would cut us a check for the whole thing, minus our deductible and we would pay the repair facility. She also said it was now being treated as a collision even though the original claim on USAA we viewed stated comprehensive. We disagreed with that

but just wanted to push ahead so we could arrange with the Volkswagen dealer to get the repair set up. BTW…Our VW repair representative also agreed it should be a comprehensive claim. Next, our Volkswagen dealer contacted us to let us know they had received the repair estimate from USAA. We were happy to hear until the representative told us the estimate was considerably lower than what it would take to fix it. Melissa again left several messages for Patricia about this issue. No response for several days all while we knew that every delay also delays the repair. I finally called Patricia’s supervisor and left her an urgent message. She called and went through a few of the issues and then stated that the claim was going through as a collision. I simply stated that from what I had read in basic definitions, as well as other insurance sites, that what we had should be under our comprehensive coverage. At that point (even though she hadn’t been friendly to begin with) she got very defensive. I admit that I got angry at that point and told her I would be raising that question to higher levels if necessary. She said, “Feel

free.” and hung up.

Also…as if this wasn’t enough already, there were problems with getting a rental car approved for the length of time we would need it. Our VW dealer is over an hour away from us and with our demanding work schedules we can’t just drop off the car whenever and run across the street to get a rental. Of course, we played along anyway out of necessity and ended up paying for a day of rental car fees ourselves. At the end of all this mess we have three major complaints.

1. THIS WAS NOT A COLLISION IN ANY WAY!

2. The very confusing way the final payments came out when originally we had been told we would get one check to pay for the entire repair minus our

deductible (should have been $100, not $500) and we would pay VW ourselves. Instead we got two checks (I think..but am still confused!) to us and VW got another check from you!

3. It’s small change at this point, but by then I was angered that we even had to pay for a day of rental car fees out of our pocket.

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