Need Help w/liability insurance.

[CPR]

You can find RLI at http://www.rlicorp.com also.

[nixquax]

Have been in the bizniz for 5 years and recently was insured for 1 million (liability). Cost is approx. $500 per year. This is in the the Bay Area (California) so it should be less in other more less expensive areas of the country. What is confusing is the terminology in the policy. Lets say you are doing a repair and it "runs" on you. Would the liability policy cover you or is it just to protect you from customers possibly filing a suit against you? If anyone has any experiences please post. NXQX

[Sneck]

I'm not in the insurance business, and I have not had any first hand experience with business liability claims, but it seems to me that any liability insurance is probably intended for the other things that get damaged as a misfortunate circumstance occurs.

For example, If I had a rain gutter installer guy on my house and he was climbing up and down the ladder, and the ladder slipped off the roof and crashed through the front window of my house and broke my beautiful statue valued at one-hundred thousand dollars, the rain-gutter guy's liability insurance would pay to put in a new window and pay me the one-hundred thousand bucks that the statue was valued at.

Now on the other hand, lets say this rain gutter guy dammaged some of my good existing rain gutter by accident, the way to handle it would be to have the rain gutter guy either fix the damaged rain-gutter, or replace it. He would probably just pay out of his pocket and not make any money on this deal, and be more careful next time.

The same (as I see it) would apply to windshield repair. If you break the windshield, pay for it out of your own pocket, (or come to some agreement with the customer on how much you should pay to have a new windshield installed). Insurance would be used in a situation that involves a large sum of money that a person would normally not have the ability to pay for.

I could be off base with this, so take it with a grain of salt... but that's the way it seems the liability insurance would be set up for.

Of course it boils down to all the wording/language used in the insurance policy.

Sneck

[GlasWeldTech]

The way I see it is the insurance would NOT pay for the windshield. The policy is to protect you in case someone trips over your toolbox or if maybe you dented a hood. Jeff would be able to help answer this one. I am still recovering from him bashing my curing light.

[mafsu]

I have a little first hand experience with this one. My ex-business partner called our liabilty company about a windshield I cracked out after being in business 2 weeks. No they will not pay for it.

[StarQuest]

I have to agree with Mafsu and somewhat with GlassWeldTech. General liablity insurance doesn't cover any damage you may cause to a vehicle while servicing it. That type of coverage would fall under a garage keepers policy, which is much more expensive (somewhere between $1800-$2500 per year) General liablity insurance is needed to protect your customer from being sued if you or somebody else happens to be injured as a result of your repair or during the process of your repair. Injury caused by slipping off a ladder or somebody tripping over your tool box would most likely be covered. That's why the coverage is so cheap! RLI probably has a very low rate of claims filed against them in WSR only.

[mafsu]

As I understand from my agent it would cover say a dented hood if you were to drop a bridge on it. Of course it would be a lot easier to get a pdr guy to fix this kind of damage.

[repare-brise]

Once again my perspective comes from North of the border,but here goes. I have 2 seperate insurance policies, one is a garage keepers policy and the other is a general liability policy. The first can be negotiated to much less than the price quoted in Starquest's post. I pointed out to my agent that we don't use a hoist, hammers, impact wrenches, welding equipment, or other possibly dammaging objects, and that we don't remove or install any parts. After conveying this information to the insurance CO he was able to reduce my premiums to $32 per month The garage keepers policy also protects my equipment in case of theft for $5000 with a $250 dedutable . As for the general liability I have $1 million(candian) in coverage, I have a dedutable of $2000. This policy serves to protect my customers(and me) from large misshaps(repairing a Ferrari, accidentaly hit the shifter, which statrs rolling backwards and stops in a Rolls Royce(hence the $1 million). The cost for this policy is $47 per month.

If a WS cracks out while I repair it my first option is to repair the WS(it is afterall what I do). The second option is to explain to the customer that has signed my waiver, that I was his last ditch solution before replacing the glass, so now he has to replace the glass. The final option (and the one I would only invoke in very special circumstances) is to pay for a new WS or the customers deductable.

Merci