Auto Insurance Claims: my car totalled, insurance company stalling!, enterprise rent a car, allstate insurance

Question
Hi, on wed. feb 18, 2009, i was rear ended by a girl in a rental car she wasnt supposed to be driving. she caused me to hit the back of the car in front of me. the girl wasnt on the rental contract and to my knowledge wasnt under the insurance of the renter either. the insurance company for Enterprise Rent-A-Car is saying that they needed to check with allstate (insurance of the renter) to see if they will extend coverage before they send me a check (the apprasier totalled my car). now when this all began, my claim adjuster contacted the driver to talk to her, and she was uncoopertive. Allstate says that they must wait 30 days to try to talk to the driver and the renter before they can say yes or no they wont extend coverage. i personally dont think allstate is going to because they dont have to. i dont have 30 days to wait before i can get a new car, so is the insurance company for enterprise stalling or something? is there a way to speed up this process? is this the only way to go about it? what shoud i do? im n metro atlant, ga

Answer
Hi Rudolph,

If you have collision coverage on your own insurance policy, you should make the claim with your insurance company. If you do not have collision coverage you should prepare yourself for the fact that there may not be any coverage here at all. Allstate will only extend coverage to the driver if they were listed on the rental contract or on their police. Enterprise will only extend coverage if the driver was on the contract and the renter purchased the additional insurance coverage from Enterprise. Allstate is allowed to take 30 days to investigate the claim.

In the end, there may not be any coverage here at all. You may have to file suit against the driver in order to have a chance of recovering anything and then you may end up with only a judgement that is uncollectable if the person does not have any money. Hopefully it will be determined that there is coverage somewhere.

I hope this helps
Richard Hixenbaugh