This is seriously fucking shit. I need to rant first before I get to the heart of the question.

So I was driving along a main road a few months ago and this girl pulls out in front of me and I braked but it was too close and I smashed in to her.

She admitted it was her fault. I claimed the insurance and everything and then I take my car off to the place where the insurance company told me to go because they have some deal with that place or whatever.

So they have my car for a week or something, then they ring up and say that there is damage under the car (which I already fucking told them because my mechanic checked it just the day before I took it in and he saw it) so they really didn't need to take that long to tell me that. Then they say that I have to claim that separately because "it wasn't caused by the crash and the new panels etc to replace the ones that got damaged in the crash won't fit on". Seriously, in what universe does that even make sense?

If the damage under the car causes the panels to not fit on, the ones that were already on there would have fallen off! Unless the under car damage was caused by the crash.

So anyway, now that second claim lies on me because they "couldn't" *cough* bullshit *cough* put the new panels etc. on without fixing the bottom of the car, which is also fucked because if I didn't have this crash, I wouldn't have had to worry about the bottom of the car.

So now I have to pay the excess of $550 when I've probably paid the entire cars worth in insurance over the years.

So my question.

It is quite obvious that the insurance companies are going to rip you off every chance they get. It is also obvious that the chances are that you'r going to pay off the worth of your car, plus more, before you have any major crash. Otherwise the insurance companies would lose money if that wasn't the case.

On top of this you have to pay some of the money it costs to fix your car.

So do you think it's better to just save the money yourself?
Or even save the money for your car, but then also get 3rd party insurance, because you never know if you're gonna end up crashing in to a Saab or something lol

It just seems logical to me that insurance is a rip off. I'm a rating one driver btw, and still all this bullshit.

What do you think?