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Read your insurance policy. They vary greatly from company to company and from state to state. I was a Claims Adjuster on automotive service contracts for nine years until about four years ago. There were some things we had to pay in some states and not in others. Incidently, I could write a book (and maybe I will) on schemes both insureds and repair shops came up with to try to screw the insurance company out of something they didn't have coming. I caught a Chevy dealer in Mississippi installing a $500 salvage yard engine in a Chevy pickup after I'd authorized $2700 for a new Goodwrench unit. I caught a Dodge dealer wanting $3900 to replace a complete engine in a full size Dodge van when the only problem was a $100 fuel injector, etc. The one I loved was a man in Idaho, whose contract was about to expire and who thought he'd get a new engine in his pickup before it did, pulled the oil drain plug on an F150 pickup, ran it until the engine seized and then had a shop, probably one of his buddies, call in a claim for $3600 for a new engine. He hadn't read his contract. The contract stated the total of all claims was limited to the NADA wholesale value of the vehicle just prior to the most recent failure. His pickup wholesaled for $2200 and we'd already spent $1982 for a transmission in it. After he intentionally destroyed his engine, we had $218 left to spend. We had to put that clause in contracts. Otherwise dealers would paper sell their junkers to an employee, put a service contract on them, and use the service contract to rebuild them before putting them back on the lot. And the huge, high volume, big city dealers were the worst of the lot. The knew the manufacturer would never come back at them because of the volume of units they moved. We Adjusters would never attempt to deny a justified claim. We simply followed the contracts to the letter. I left that job convinced that everything negative and derogatory that's ever been said about the automotive industry has been grossly understated. There are some REAL slimeballs in that business.
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