After a personal injury, you may become vulnerable to various situations that can easily go awry without legal guidance. One of the worst of these scenarios is insurance companies and how they try to get out of paying for your medical bills. It’s already stressful enough to go through an injury from a car accident or from a fall at work. Having to deal with insurance companies during recovery just compounds the issue.
You’ll inevitably discover sneaky ways insurance companies try to trick you, which you may fall for without having an attorney by your side. When you hire a personal injury lawyer, they’ll take over and handle insurance companies on your behalf.
We’ll do that for you here at Meshbesher Law Firm. We handle all insurance communication and make sure you get the compensation owed you. However, it pays to look out for yourself before you hire an attorney.
Watch out for these offhanded insurance schemes:
Forcing You to Make a Statement
One of the sneakiest methods insurance companies use to stick it to you is tricking you into recording a statement about your injury. Since they know you’re perhaps vulnerable after experiencing an injury, you may not have full capability to reason upon certain requests.
What makes this doubly unethical is that insurance companies don’t hesitate to ask for statements from you while you’re still in the hospital. You may say something into a digital recorder you regret later.
During a trial, an insurance adjuster could bring this evidence in and hold it against you. This could result in you losing your case and ending up having to pay your own medical bills.
Delaying Your Claim
This tactic by insurance companies is maddening, yet it happens frequently as a psychological maneuver. It all starts when you submit your claim and realize it’s taking longer than you expected. As you call the insurance company to find out what’s going on, they typically give you the runaround on saying your claim is still processing.
After a number of weeks, they’ll keep coming up with new excuses on why it’s taking forever. Without legal representation, you won’t know this is actually a red flag for the next step insurance companies take.
They know that if the claim keeps getting slowed down in a protracted bureaucratic mess, you’ll have to give in to accepting a lower settlement in order to pay your medical bills.
Denying Your Claim
Sometimes the insurance company will just outright deny your claim based on that earlier statement you perhaps made. The company may try to make it look like you get into accidents frequently and that you’re really to blame for it occurring in the first place.
In other cases, they may try to make it look like you were at least partially to blame if evidence shows some guilt from the other victim. That’s frequently enough to give complete denials, sometimes after lengthy waits.
Settling for Less Money
After the above wait period of delaying your claim, the insurance company may try to convince you that settling for less is better than going through litigation. They figure you’ll cave in to this knowing they have a team of powerful lawyers who can probably defeat your case.
You should never give in and settle for less out of financial desperation. When you contact us immediately after your accident, you’ll have a top-tier personal injury legal team fighting for your rights and removing the burdens of dealing with insurance companies.
