What happens when you wreck a car you bought in "fiao"?

In New York when you finance or lease a car, you are required to carry comprehensive collision coverage. This coverage ensures both vehicles are paid for, whether written off as a total or if it ends up repaired at a shop.

When the car is owned free and clear, you can carry state-required minimum coverage though it seems you don't really have to get that in DR at all.

As it goes in most cases I know, if blame can be pointed then they end up being ordered to make the payments of the outstanding or repair. I have heard of people actually using insurance to make claims here, but I don't know of any personally.

Don't crash, and drive faster than everyone else to reduce the chances they will drive into you.

say, you borrow money from financiera pedro, buy a brand new car in auto germanica, wreck it on the way home from dealership. a new car is covered with insurance so it should pay up to whatever value it was insured for. you'll have to pay that money back to financiera. mind you, they rarely, if ever, lend a full value of the car. usually it is only a certain percentage, say 50%. insurance money will be enough.

the true fun starts if you have left anything other than the car itself as a collateral. but in any case, financiera's goal is that you pay up. taking whatever collateral you offered is the last resort...

We've had a few accidents here (others driving my cars), with two of them totaled, and the insurance has always paid up in virtually the same manner as our US auto insurance. I use Seguros Universal here in the DR.

You are not allowed to drive out of the lot without insurance if you financed the car, whether new or used. At least no serious dealer will let you...

You covered by insurance. Never had an insurance issue here, claims have always been dealt with professionally and paid promptly. Then again, that depends on who you insure with or the broker you use.

caribmike said:

I won't do it but this question came up talking about recently.

Say you purchase a car from a dealer that way and you have an accident (your fault / the others fault)? What happens? Is it covered by insurance or do you end up paying the monthly payments until the end of the contract?

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In DR you can not purchase a brand new 0 kilometer car financed without full coverage. As Robert mentioned and I fully agree, all the major car insurance company in DR are very professional & provide excellent prompt service. Used car is a whole other ball game. Usually if the car is relatively new, say only 2-4 years old, financing will also require full insurance coverage. If a car is older than 7 years old you usually can't get full coverage and some dealers have financieras that actually do finance cars like a 2003 Honda Civic. Be warned though that if this vehicle gets totaled and you only carry liability insurance you will most likely be harassed by the financiera until you pay up. Sounds reasonable?

NotLurking

Robert said:

You covered by insurance. Never had an insurance issue here, claims have always been dealt with professionally and paid promptly. Then again, that depends on who you insure with or the broker you use.

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Some months ago I posted on the same subject. My car was damaged whilst parked in the street, by a bus (Guagua) reversing down the one way street in the wrong direction. I am fully covered. Sting in the tail is that my insurance paid for the repairs to my vehicle minus the deductible which the bus owners insurance covered. The guagua owner wasn't too happy that I demanded she either pay me the deductible content (17k) or notify her insurers so they could pay. Eventually, all was settled except the costs I had of many trips to Viamar, car hire for the period of repair and of course Colonial pumped up my premium as i had made a claim.

Seems a tad unfair that as the innocent party I was responsible for 90,000 of costs ( and still paying this year inflated premium) and the other pays zilch !

Simple

Don't finance a s**t box.

Same topic: The other day my daughter and the owner of Chico's (damn decent restaurant in Cabrera) were sitting having lunch together. We noticed a very large semi with a road grader on the flat bed rolling down the street. Just about in front of Chico's we heard an extremely loud "pow" and saw the left side mirror of a Ford pickup truck passing the other direction with the driver's side window blown out! Apparently the mirror had hit the semi, flipped back and shattered the driver's window.

Running to the road we watched the pickup meander down the road at least 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile from the site of the accident. The semi slammed on his brakes and stopped immediately. We stood there and watched the gringo get out of the truck, shake off the glass, peer at this truck, walk around a few minutes and then drive off. He apparently either had no clue what happened, he was the one at fault or couldn't speak Spanish so driving off was the best course of action.

Through careful deduction fueled by massive amounts of laughter, we surmised he was a gringo because a Dominican would have thrown himself on the ground, grabbing his neck, proclaiming he could no longer procreate due to the bad driving of the massive (and obviously heavily insured) truck, sued and won the friggin' lottery!