safety question concerning a hitch assembly

Well a followup to the original post...

The person who hit us, and we ourselves have State Farm. So I will refer to their insurance as SFA and ours as SFB. Anyway, we took the truck in and had it inspected. The bumper was replaced...SFA insisted that they use an aftermarket bumper, siting cost differential. We spoke with SFB and they said that if the situation was reversed, they would do the same thing for cost savings. I asked if the aftermarket bumper is cheaper in cost, isn't it likewise cheaper in construction and therefore LESS safe? They had no answer for my question. So yeah, it seems Safety takes a backseat sometimes in the name of profits, at least in my opinion.

So when the body shop manager received the piece of ****, I mean aftermarket bumper when it arrived, it already had problems. The chrome was flaking in spots and it was twisted. He said the twist was slight, but it was enough to notice and he wasn't going to use it, not to mention the chrome problem.

So he ordered a OEM bumper, which SFA proceeded to gripe about. They said that they could just order another aftermarket bumper. Steve (the body mgr) told them that he was on a deadline and was not going to wait for them to ship the other bumper back for a Return, then wait longer for the new one to come in. The difference in price was a couple hundred dollars. SFA can get over it.

Next, Steve calls and asks if we had a key to the additional cable lock that was securing the tire to the truck to prevent theft. We said, "What Key?"...He told us that had we needed to use the spare, we would have been hosed as the cable lock that secured it took 2 minutes to cut off with a angle grinder and he didn't figure we had one in our back pocket for such situations...The dealer never gave us a key to the lock (which was added by the previous owner). Which makes me wonder if they even looked...or cared.

When we took the truck in, we told Steve that the hitch took the biggest brunt of the impact. He inspected it and said that while it didn't show any visual damage, they were replacing the entire assembly (why he had to remove the spare) because it was a safety issue and they didn't want to be liable in case there was a problem they missed. I love it when they do the right thing and not the cheap thing.

So they replaced the hitch assembly (hitch, brackets, everything), and even replaced the little stub ball hitch that was in there when it was hit, and a new 2" ball (for our smaller flatbed trailer).

All told, it was $3,600 in damage which included parts, paint and labor. Not exorbitant, but more than I would have wanted to shell out of pocket.

But at least I know that 1) The trailer hitch is reliable now, and 2) The people at the collision center went out of their way to make sure the job was done Right.

Thanks for reading!

Badger thanks for your service. In the field you were in ask insurance if u could set up a half done warning bomb in their office.
(just kidding)

Thanks for posting back.

The use of non OEM parts, yeh you have to read the fine print in your insurance policy. Many state that have the right to use aftermarket parts. You may be able to add that ability for OEM parts pending the insurance carrier.

I have Nationwide in our area and I wanted the OEM parts, they offered it, I paid more but they only offer it up to 10 years old vehicle. After 10 years they can use aftermarket. I guess in some cases, after 10 years OEM may or may not actually exist.

Glad the shop did the right thing. They are a keeper.

Thanks

John

Yea, thanks for the follow up post. Glad the repair shop and insurances did the right thing too.

FYI, after your post, our Chevy Equinox (not our towing truck) got T-boned when a Chevy 1500 ran a stop sign. Wife was driving, I was in the passenger seat. Vehicle got hit on the drivers side. We are with AllState. Long story short, we took the car to their authorized collision center and they had the car for over 2 months. But the car was restored back to factory, and GM provided all original GM parts and even had GM inspectors review the work before they put the skin back on the car. And oh ... the cost on the other guys insurance? It was a little over $10,000. Yea, really. Both doors, the bar between the doors going in into the roof and under the floor, and the rear quarter panel. And of course, they replaced all the parts with new. When the car was finally done, it was beautiful!

However, we never had any hassles about anything. Any haggling that might have happened, well .... between the collision center and AllState, we never heard a word, except from the collision center that called us and told us they found new problems which would cost more to repair and take longer. It started out at $5,000 initially, and ended up over $10,000. We didn't pay a single penny.