In essence, you've already filed a claim. By that, I mean that your insurer probably already reported the incident to ChoicePoint, and it will appear on your CLUE report.

Actually asking for the $$$ might cause sone additional adverse action internally at the insurance company (higher rate, dropped completely at some later date, etc.). However, in the eyes of other insurers in the future, you've already filed a claim.

To verify if your adjuster's visit is on your CLUE Report, wait a few weeks and get a free copy of it at:

CLUE Report

EDIT to add: If the adjuster's visit does appear on your CLUE report in the future, you can probably successfully dispute it with ChoicePoint, and it will be removed from the CLUE report.

Over the years, I've successfully disputed three separate CLUE report entries. From my experience, I don't believe insurers bother to respond to ChoicePoint's request to verify the information.

konrad80 said:ifyouhavetoask: Thanks for the link to the CLUE report, I didn't realize how easily I could get that information. Let me see if I understand you correctly, at this point I've likely already filed a claim because it shows up on my CLUE report, but I could probably dispute that and have a clean report as long as I decline the money?It's been my experience that calling your insurer about a claim, will sometimes result in the action appearing on the CLUE report. It's certainly worth checking out the report in a few weeks. Give it that long, to ensure that any filing has time to appear. The insurer might not report it immediately.

If it does show up, I would dispute it on the grounds that you never filed a claim. That wouldn't be a lie, assuming you don't go through with the claim. If you do accept the $$$ from your insurer, that's a different story. You could still dispute it, and it would probably fall off the CLUE report, but you're then dealing with an ethical issue...which I cannot help you with

The annoying thing is that many insurers will report a claim to ChoicePoint, even when you only inquire about a claim, and don't actually take the money. Totally unfair.

ifyouhavetoask said:To verify if your adjuster's visit is on your CLUE Report, wait a few weeks and get a free copy of it at:

CLUE Report

Neat ... I didn't know you could do that. Interestingly, I've got no claims listed even though I made a claim for a complete loss (stolen/recovered with severe damage) of a vehicle 4 years ago.

zzyzzx said:NukeMedDude said:I can confirm at least with USAA that simply making a call to them to inquire about an insurance coverage after an accident will result in them placing a claim on your CLUE, even if they don't pay $1. I was involved in a hit and run and my car was totalled. The police never found the other car, and it was old enough that I only had liability. I knew that the car wouldn't be covered, yet called them to drop the insurance of the car, and they (USAA) placed a claim on my CLUE, even though there was no claim made.

So you told them that you were in an accident instead of just asking them to drop coverage because you junked the car?

They asked me for the reason I was dropping coverage, because at that time, it was my only car. I told them it had been totalled in a hit and run. I could of just told them it broke down or was junked, but I didn't want to jeporadize my relationship with USAA, because I have everything with them. Also, the phone conversation was being recorded. I initially tried to cancel with regular customer service, but they kicked me over to the insurance side of the house.

I am in the Chicago burbs and filed a hail damage claim back in 2001. We have a shake roof and had roof and siding damage about 15k. There was no negative impact on our policies. We had only been in this house for one year or so, but had a policy with the same company on our older house for many years with no claims.

It is less than a year old, you have hail in the area, you may have damage you can't see this would allow mositure to get in attic and cause mold. I would talk w/ the company that did your work about patching and if they can do that instead of a full roof, but I would have a professional look at it.

NukeMedDude said:I can confirm at least with USAA that simply making a call to them to inquire about an insurance coverage after an accident will result in them placing a claim on your CLUE, even if they don't pay $1. I was involved in a hit and run and my car was totalled. The police never found the other car, and it was old enough that I only had liability. I knew that the car wouldn't be covered, yet called them to drop the insurance of the car, and they (USAA) placed a claim on my CLUE, even though there was no claim made.
Choicepoint is very aggressive in getting accident records. Did you actually see USAA on the CLUE?
Otherwise it could have easily come from your Police report. Many states are passing tough privacy laws. This will make it harder to get this data.

What does your policy say about how long you have to file a claim? If you have damage then there are probably lots of other people with damage too. What happened in my town was that a bunch of out of state roofers set up shop and reroofed half the town over last summer. Did they do a quality job? I don't know. What I do know is they worked very fast.

That's an excellent question, when I first posted I had a letter from my insurance company with the estimate and a request that I let them know if there was a difference between that amount and what the contractor bid for the job. I assumed that meant that my insurance company would pay the contractor directly, but a few days later I got a check in the mail for the full amount.

The contractor that put in a ridge vent on my roof (after the hail) said the shingles would probably be fine until the next hail storm came through. Like you said I would have a newer roof that way. On the other hand, what if the next disaster is really catastrophic, requiring more than just the shingles to be replaced? Would that cause problems in filing the next claim because I didn't replace the shingles.

At this point I think I will go ahead and cash the check, since I have already filed the claim and it will likely show up on my CLUE report anyway. I haven't decided on whether I will get the roof fixed right away, I need to decide if it's worth the risk.

have you ever given any thought into redoing the roof yourself? Its not that difficult. Cheap labor can be found at any seven eleven in my area. 3 men for $50/hr. Can't beat it.