Hi guys, I've been thinking about the replacement parts covered by insurance in case of an accident and here's what I found with my Progressive direct policy.
If your car is the current model year or within first year of ownership or less than 12,000 miles (whichever one ends sooner I guess), they will allow new OEM parts.
(So, if your car model changes next day, or you bought an outgoing model after the new one is released, you are out of luck and stuck with used parts. !!!)
If the car is 1-3 year old or between 12,000 - 36,000 miles they will offer used OEM or aftermarket parts (new OEM only if none of the parts are otherwise available).
After 36,000 miles / 3 years they will use only aftermarket parts unless they are not available. But they will offer warranty for that particular part as long as you own the vehicle.
It didn't very sound very appetizing to me but glad that there is a policy at least and they were honest about it.
Don't know if any of these policies are negotiable or not.

Next I checked Geico.
They are saying that you can take it to your MB dealership and they are okay with whatever repair done by MB.
Even though vague and ambiguous, it sounded better to me. My insurance was due for renewal anyway , so I chose this.
Anyone has other experience or information, please post this so that we can weed out the bad apples , please. Thanks.

 

Does your insurance offer an OEM part add on?

I'm with farmers and they offer an OEM part add on where all repairs will be done with new OEM parts.

I pay about $100/yr more for that add on.

 

Sure, Geico will let you repair your car at any dealership, as long as the dealership agree to charge a low set rate determine by Geico. You really need to be careful when it comes to discount auto insurance.


https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum...-careful-geico

 

I had geico for the past 5 years and when I were in an accident with my C class and broke my headlight and front bumper, I took it to my Indy shop. Everything was replaced with new OEM parts, no questions asked from Geico. So they are good in case you actually need the insurance.

 

While I don't have Geico, I did have an experience filing a claim with Geico and overall was very impressed.

My wife's car was hit at the parking lot of her office by her co-worker. He was trying to back up and just barely scraped the back of her car by the license plate. There's maybe a 3 or 4 inch scratch on the license plate and maybe 1 to 2 inch scratch that extended beyond the license plate onto the bumper.

Her co-worker was insured by Geico and gave us his insurance policy #. We called Geico to file a claim. They had a rep meet us two days later and cut us a check on the spot for what they thought the repair would cost.
They included a brand new bumper, all the trim/molding pieces and rental car for a week in their estimate. I asked for OEM parts for the repair, the rep looked up the price difference on his computer and increased the check to cover for OEM parts (it was only about $200 difference between new OEM part vs new or refurb aftermarket parts) I honestly didn't think the bumper and trim/molding needed to be replaced. I thought a little patch and some paint would fix it, but the rep insisted that because the bumper is plastic, they didn't want to take any chance so they insisted on replacing it with a new bumper and didn't want to worry about trim/molding getting damaged during the removal phase so included new trim/molding pieces.

While the labor they included in the estimate was slightly lower than what the dealer's body shop charges, they said if the check was not enough to have the dealer contact them with the claim # and they will issue a 2nd check to cover the difference.

After the repair was done, the total cost was a bit higher than the estimate (due to higher labor costs). When I went to pickup the car, the dealer had me sign a second check that was sent to them from Geico to cover the difference in labor costs.

So Geico let me pick the repair shop (the dealer in this case), substituted in new OEM parts, and paid the higher labor rates of the dealer shop all without any fuss. and this was on a 7 year old car (at the time).

So while it's only one experience with Geico, it was a positive one.

I tried to get a insurance quote with Geico but because they couldn't offer home, rental property, auto, umbrella, earthquake, as a whole package, I ended up not changing my insurance over to them.

 

I'm insured with Geico. I had an accident on May 2014. They used non-oem parts, even though I asked for oem. I was told that if the repair with aftermarket was not good they would redo the repair with OEM. In fact, the body work was not good so they reinspected the car and approved a new repair with OEM.

I then asked them why did they do that? it would have been easier if they just used oem in the first place.

Their answer was very practical- less than 5% of repairs are rejected because of non oem parts. So while in my case it was not a wise financial move, over the larger body of insured, its a great move on their part.

And after all, the bottom line for any insurance company, is exactly that- the bottom line

By the way, I have no issues with Geico- they treated me fairly and always provided me with full information and when the re-repair was necessary, they paid for the rental car again, in full, even though I had already exceeded my 30 days for car rental on this one claim.

 

So which of the insurances are the "non discount" auto insurances?