If you drive a vehicle in Colorado, you’ve definitely heard of or experienced hail damage. It’s something countless drivers deal with each year as the unpredictable Front Range storms roll in and out in 20 minutes, leaving dents and paint chips in their wake. Something we get asked a lot is whether or not fixing the hail damage is even worth it – worth the insurance claim, worth the whole process, worth the potential hike in insurance rates. We get it, it’s a hassle, like most automobile repairs, but there are a number of reasons you absolutely should fix hail damage. Here are just a few.
Hurts Resale Value
If you don’t fix hail damage and get them taken care of, and eventually want to sell your vehicle in the future, that damage could cost you big in the form of profit. Hail damage, understandably, hurts the resale value of your automobile. Because it’s so obvious, and the cosmetic can be the maker or breaker of a sale, it’s definitely a tally in the negative column when potential buyers are weighing their options. Even if you’re trying to resell it back to the dealership you got it from, or trading it into another dealership, you’ll get less cash than you would if you had gotten the dents fixed.
Risk of Rust
Those dents sometimes include paint chips, and those paint chips can lead to rust. Rust, of course, can lead to bigger issues, causing damage that goes beyond cosmetic if left to its own devices for too long. When rust starts to rear its head, you’re in the position of having to fix not one, but two problems and insurance is far less likely to help you out.
Insurance Woes
Let’s say you received some hail damage and decided to let it go, not filing a claim and deciding to live with the cosmetic damage. That might be fine and dandy, but what if you find yourself smacked with a second round of hail and want to make a claim?
Because you never claimed the first round of damage, insurance may have a harder time accepting your claim this time around, unsure of which damage was caused by which incident. Oh, and if you’ve heard those stories about people who make the claim, get the insurance money, and pocket it – think twice before attempting that particular strategy – it’s actually insurance fraud and you would be facing very serious consequences if you went down that path.
Unexpected Damage
Sometimes, hail damage goes beyond the cosmetic. Sometimes, those dents, or that hail, manage to impact things under the hood, alignment of your wheels, ball bearings, etc. The list goes on, but if you don’t get your vehicle checked out at all after a hail storm, you might be missing some serious issues that will land you in the shop with a much bigger bill down the road. There’s just no way for the average person to truly tell where the hail damage ends, and whether or not it is purely cosmetic. It’s far better to take it in and get an estimate than assuming the best and having to pay for the worst later.
Hail damage can be a major pain, but there are plenty of reasons to get it handled straight away. If you need a team you can trust, we’d be honored to help you understand the extent of your damage and be realistic with you about what the cost of the repairs might be.
