(New York): Car sustained water damage from snow melt and and rain that got into the sunroof drains. Insurance (Allstate) is denying the claim, saying it's a maintenance issue. Service records indicate that the drains were clear when it was serviced in 2025, leading me and the shop to believe that it is not a drain clog maintenance issue but rather due to the storms.
Insurance has denied the claim and I don't expect them to budge. I have sent in a grievance escalation to the New York State DFS but heard nothing so far. I want to sell the car and get what I can for it and move on, I can't store it and the shop where it's sitting is (understandably) getting impatient. Question is, if I sell the car, is there any chance of getting the grievance fulfilled from the state or any chance at all that the insurance would pay? I realize insurance is not going to change their mind, but I may be able to make something happen with the state. I don't know if there's any chance of that if the car is gone. Tia.
(NY auto) Can I get claim paid or DFS grievance if I sell the car?
byu/bambolius inInsurance
Posted by bambolius
4 Comments
Don’t sell it yet. The grievance may not even move the needle as you’ll need to provide proof that it’s not due to a maintanence issue and it’s hard to do that when you no longer have the vehicle.
If you sell the car, and they have no ability to inspect the sunroof/drains/etc, it’s going to make it very difficult for them to do any further investigation.
And while I haven’t seen or inspected the car, I don’t see any situation where insurance will be forced to cover this.
An inspection from last year does not prove that a clog was not present at the time of loss. A clog can occur at any time.
Bluntly, it doesn’t matter – there’s no universe where insurance is going to cover this damage. Just because the drains were clear last year doesn’t mean you undertook the proper and continuing maintenance to ensure the drains remained clear. It’s one thing if the weight of the snow broke a sunroof seal or the sunroof itself, but that’s not what happened. The drains were clogged and you haven’t done anything to make sure they remained clear after servicing the car last year. And I’ll bet that “unclog sunroof drains” was a ticked box on a service ticket but no one actually snaked the drains (unless there was already a known clog).
Understand that the drains were clogged, and if they weren’t clogged , there wouldn’t have been an issue at all. You’ll almost certainly have to prove that the drains were functioning just fine immediately before the storm and failed in some accidental way due to the storm. Can’t imagine how you’ll actually prove that, as it’s much more likely that you simply failed to ensure the drains remained clear. Was there something unusual about the storm that caused something weird to fall from the sky which clogged the drains? Or was it just rain and snow (which aren’t capable of clogging drains)?
So if you think you can show that the drains were clear at first and then the storm itself clogged them, you better keep the car until there’s been a chance to inspect the car. But (again), it really doesn’t matter – you can hold onto that car for the next 10 years and let 100 mechanics and insurance adjusters look it over from the front bumper to the back bumper and they’re never going to conclude that the storm clogged previously clear drains.