Tried to handle my claim alone after a bad rear-end — biggest mistake I made
So I'm finally on the other side of this whole nightmare and I just want to share what I went through because I wish someone had told me earlier.
About seven months ago I got rear-ended pretty hard at a red light. The other driver was on their phone. My neck and lower back took the worst of it and I ended up needing physical therapy twice a week for months. Not exactly cheap.
At first I honestly thought — okay, it's obvious who was at fault, the adjuster will be reasonable, I'll just submit my bills and this will wrap up in a few weeks. Yeah. No.
Every time I called the claims line I got a different person. They kept asking me to re-explain everything from scratch. Then they started pushing me to sign this "full and final" release form way before I even knew if my back was going to need more treatment. It felt like they were racing to close my file before I understood what I was agreeing to.
I was still going to appointments, still missing shifts at work, still getting collection notices — and somehow also trying to negotiate with people whose literal job is to pay out as little as possible. I was completely underwater.
Finally a coworker who'd been through something similar told me to just talk to an attorney. I kept putting it off thinking it would cost me money upfront or make things more complicated. Neither was true.
Once I had someone in my corner the whole tone of the communications changed almost immediately. I stopped dreading my phone.
If you're sitting there thinking you can white-knuckle this alone — I get it, I really do. But I wish I hadn't waited four months to ask for help.