What terrible a terrible experience dealing with USAA for a not at fault insurance claim. Not only do they no longer have 24/7 claims help, but when you put in a claim during their off hours (for my claim I submitted on Saturday after one of their insurance customers rear ended me while i was stopped at a red light) they do not call you back. I had to inform them during their business hours by phone that their customer rear ended, did not submit a claim, and then had to wait a week for them to deem the rear ending accident 'not at fault' for me. It took over a month to get in the shop after the estimate was done, during which time nobody called me to tell me about my claim, and even then the headache was far from over.
I then got my car in the body shop and the body shop that I took my vehicle to told me that USAA's claims estimator overestimated the damage to the car and that I would just pay them the amount due not the incorrect claims amount that USAA provided. This new estimate was submitted to USAA on June 17th. On June 21st, I picked my car up from the body shop (who did an excellent job) and paid them the new estimate amount and turned in my rental car. The next day, June 22, I received a car from the rental car company saying that USAA had not paid then for 11 days worth of rental and asked me to contact them because, in their words, "USAA is pretty bad about getting back to us when we request payment and we have better luck if the customer calls them directly." On June 23rd, I receive the first and only call from USAA during this 2 month process. I was at work, so I was unable to take the call. The call wasn't to ask me how my body shop experience was, or them telling me that they had paid the rental car company the amount due on the car, but instead it was to call and tell me that they were going to need the excess money that they overpaid due to their estimator incorrectly overestimating the job. The insurance agent had call the body shop, realized that they were two days too late for me picking up the car, and that I would either need to send a check or call the call center to pay over the phone for the amount of overpayment between the two estimates. The only issue with this is that when I went into my claim the new adjustment was showing that I would also have to pay a deductible for a not at fault accident. Since two different amounts were showing, I put in a request for someone to call me the back of Friday the 24th so that I could get confirmation on the amount that I owe due to USAA's incorrect initial estimate. Nobody has contacted me to clear up this misunderstanding.
So to summarize this two month horror show, USAA doesn't contact customers when they have put in claim tickets. When you contact them to tell them one of their insurance customers hit you, they will take their time finding fault when it is pretty obvious. They then send customers to appraisers who overestimate the amount of damage and cost to fix their vehicles. They then cut checks immediately to their customers rather than dealing with the shop directly. They won't call you to check in on your claim or help guide you through the next steps. You are responsible for setting up your own appointment with the body shop and rental car agency. When your new shop does the right thing and estimates the damage correctly, fixes it under cost, and submits this claim to USAA long before the car is fixed and picked up, they will sit on it and do nothing. They don't seem to respond to rental car agency requesting additional payment for the rental car. They will call you asking you to repay the difference between the original estimate and the new one when they simply could have contacted the shop and had me pay the shop and then automatically taken payment from the shop. They also don't have to same payment amounts on their claim status and their customer emails so it is confusing as to what amount to pay. Overall, this has been nothing but a headache due to poor communication and management on USAA's part for what should have been a simple and straight forward repair. I am most likely going to have to call USAA and get a live person to confirm the amount due to them so I don't have to submit multiple payments. That's a lot of customer effort for a company who is suppose to put it's members first.
