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Comment by ben1040 | Hacker News Reader

This is the second time in as many days I've heard about this happening. Someone gets a new car, replaces the old one on their insurance, while accidentally retaining the prior car's coverages (or lack thereof).

The other one I heard of was similar -- someone went from an old beater car to a new Tesla. The old car only had liability coverage and no collision/comprehensive and they didn't change this when replacing the vehicle. They learned this the hard way when making a claim after a crash and having it denied.

I have to imagine this is the result of using a self-service portal from the insurance company. I gotta think that if you spoke to a live human at the insurance firm to make the change, they would not miss an opportunity to sell you additional coverage.

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The problem seems to be that Tesla isn't doing DD on their leases - I don't see it being hard to have the system/a person look up the new insurance to confirm the customer has comprehensive.

Not that I doubt you, but I must say that does seem like a pretty stupid mistake on the part of the insurance company. Surely having a customer go from a beater with liability only to a new car is a prime opportunity for the insurance company to increase its revenues..

Also a related issue: often it's a good idea to get the gap insurance so that if the car gets totalled and you still owe more than the replacement cost, you don't get hit with a bill.

Self-service portal should catch this too. It’s neglect on the insurers side. They have superior information on what is normal and customary and can flag unusual policies for confirmation.

I just got a new car, the dealership handled the insurance transfer. It was on us to separately verify current vs. desired coverage separately. Not sure this is the norm though.

Ultimately it’s the insurer’s product. They should verify everything, especially if they’re allowing third parties to input policies. They can easily flag outliers.

Very true. And customers should always check on things too. But I can also understand how a customer that goes with the flow of a car dealership smoothing through these things (when they should be more deliberate about) doesn't realize what's happened.

That abstract scenario aside, it's pretty bad that the insurance & dealership didn't flag anything in this issue when the Tesla was purchased. Even if they only gave a pro-forma "do you want to keep your current level of coverage?" It's bad... they're the experts on these things and should advise customers appropriately.

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