Some insurance adjusters use a rather devious strategy, when taking part in injury settlement talks. They impose a stall on the claims process, or they work to have the talks discontinued. Fortunately, there are strategies that a claimant could use, when forced to deal with such a situation.
Details on adjusters’ different strategies
Some of them come forward with an exceedingly low offer. More importantly, they stick with that low offer. Their strategy reflects their efforts to frustrate the claimant. Frustrated claimants often accept an unfair settlement.
Some adjusters simply stop responding to the claimant’s demands or counteroffers. That action represents an attempt to discontinue the negotiations.
How a claimant should respond to the different strategies
Suppose that the adjuster had presented an especially low bid/offer. By demonstrating a combination of patience and persistence, a claimant could prove that strategy ineffective.
A claimant could repeatedly request the presentation of a reasonable bid. The repeated requests might end up frustrating the adjuster. Suppose the adjuster had failed to respond to the claimant’s latest counteroffer. That would cause a breakdown in negotiations. Claimants would have 2 options, if that problem were to arise.
In most circumstances, the claimant could demonstrate a readiness to file a lawsuit against the policyholder/the insured individual. That threat normally forces adjusters to be more cooperative, as per personal injury lawyer in Belleville.
Yet, that tactic would not work if the claimant had been the victim of an uninsured motorist, or the accident had taken place in a no-fault state. When faced with those circumstances, a claimant must agree to take part in an arbitration process.
Claimants could seek help with filing a lawsuit. They could hire an attorney. Sometimes an attorney can discover a way to introduce a new issue, in order to get the process moving in the right direction.
Which of the tactics available to claimants should prove most effective?
That would really depend on the claimant’s manner and attitude, along with the amount of money that the defendant’s policy has placed on the table.
A show of impatience would weaken any attempt at frustrating the stubborn person in the Claims Department (the adjuster). A reluctance to pursue a lawsuit would eliminate one of the possibilities. That would reduce the chances for success.
Yet even claimants that hired an attorney could not count on receiving a fair settlement. Admittedly, though, it would certainly be larger than anything that they could have obtained by fighting the adjuster’s actions on their own.
Moreover, an attorney might discover that there could be a basis for requesting an extension of the statute of limitations. That approach could make it possible to gather more evidence, and perhaps ensure delivery of a reasonably sized compensation package.