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Originally Posted by will76
It sounds like you were dealing with 1 idiot handy man who was bidding too high. Some people are going to be like that. They will shoot high and sooner or later they will be in the right place at the right time (driving around like you said) and someone will hire them on the spot vs shopping it around. And you are right, if you pay too much and try to turn it in the insurance company, they don't have to pay you back 100% if they think you paid too much. Always best get them to agree/sign off on quotes and estimates before you spend a penny.
So you ended up doing the work yourself ? I thought that is what you said in the original post. Which in that one i don't believe there was a mention of insurance just that you didn't want to pay a company to do the work you and a friend could do cheaper. The insurance company isn't going to reimburse you for your time. Why didn't you hire one of the reputable companies and had them do it for $500 if the insurance company was going to sign off on it and pay for it?
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The way my insurance company ended up doing it was setting a price for clean up (I think it was around $400, but it has been a few years that might not be accurate) then they set a price to have the carport replaced/rebuilt and cut me a check. So it was up to me to hire the people to do the job. I had the option of having it done and having the insurance company just pay for it, but I have had a couple of friends who had dealt with insurance on those types of things and they were a nightmare. So my brother and I tore it down and cleaned it up then we looked into what it would cost to replace it if we did the work. My brother does construction stuff for a living (although not like this it is commercial sheet metal) so we drew up some plans made some estimates and realized that I could replace it with something that was a lot higher quality and better looking for about $1000 if we did the work. So that is what we ended up doing. In the end the whole thing actually worked out well for me. My old car was under the carport when it collapsed. The damage wasn't that bad, but it was enough to total it. So I bought the car back from the insurnace as salvage and kept it as a winter car (it does well in the nasty weather and my other car sucks in the bad weather). And I got the carport rebuilt and ended up getting to keep the rest of the money.