“I didn’t want to have to do this.”
A flash flood can destroy a beloved, high-performance car in a matter of minutes. What takes a whole lot longer, though, is getting an insurance carrier to realistically figure out what that car was worth.
That waiting game purgatory is where Ohio woman Amanda (@amandaleanntiktok) finds herself. She says she’s been making daily unanswered phone calls to Progressive insurance representatives in hopes of getting far more than their initial offer of $15,000. So far, she says it hasn’t been going well.
“It’s been over a month. I have a feeling it’s gonna be a lot longer… Maybe you guys could pick up the phone, give us a call,” she says in the clip, which has been viewed more than 14,000 times.
The dispute started Aug. 1. Amanda says her Maserati was caught in a flash flood and soon after declared a total loss. She describes the car as a 2017-2018-era model with relatively low mileage, a red interior, and a Ferrari-built engine. The specifications made it harder than usual to find clean comparisons, she notes.
About a week after inspecting the car, Amanda says Progressive came back with an offer of roughly $15,000 before additional deductions.
She says she rejected the offer, citing a lack of comparable vehicles analyzed by Progressive. She says the referenced cars had at least 10,000 more miles than hers. Amanda says she responded with four examples of her own. However, she admits these examples were in far locations, as genuinely comparable cars were difficult to find.
Those were apparently dismissed because they fell outside of the insurer’s designated search radius, she continues.
The disagreement also extended to the Maserati’s condition, Amanda says. She acknowledges some clear-coat problems but otherwise describes the car as being in excellent shape before the flood. She says she became incredulous when an adjuster pointed to mold as another reason to reduce the value of the car, as it had just been through a flood.
“Wow, it’s almost like water does that,” she sarcastically says.
But for Amanda, the bigger frustration was that after she challenged Progressive’s initial number, the conversation appeared to stall.
Amanda says Progressive initially told her someone would call back within 10 to 15 minutes after she rejected the valuation. That call, she says, never came. But roughly two weeks later, she says Bridgecrest, the company financing the Maserati, stepped in and offered to negotiate on her behalf.
After getting her hopes up because of the involvement of a commercial financier experienced in these kinds of disputes, any initial momentum has faded. She says Bridgecrest has sent repeated emails, while she and her family continue to make calls of their own.
“I guarantee you that if I didn’t pay my monthly bill on time every month, you’d notice,” she says, noting she has been without a car for nearly two months.
Viewers quickly started offering advice of their own. One commenter who identified himself as a Progressive adjuster suggested invoking the policy’s appraisal clause and escalating the matter to a supervisor.
Amanda replied that she had already invoked the clause and said neither the adjuster nor the supervisor had been returning calls. Another viewer urged her to contact Ohio insurance regulators. Amanda said that process was already underway.
In her follow-up comments, she said she’d hired a private appraisal company and that two outside evaluations put Progressive’s valuation at least $10,000 below what those appraisers believe the Maserati is worth.
Ohio’s insurance rules add some helpful context to the disagreement. For a cash settlement on a totaled vehicle, insurers are generally supposed to base the offer on the cost of a comparable automobile, with adjustments for factors such as mileage, condition and major options.
The rules also allow insurers to expand their search into nearby markets when sufficiently comparable vehicles aren’t available locally.
Ohio also generally requires insurers to respond within 15 days to claimant communications that reasonably call for a response. Though the public TikTok record isn’t enough to determine whether any specific unanswered call or email in Amanda’s case violated that requirement.
For now, the dispute is still unresolved. After repeatedly trying to reach Progressive, Amanda joked that her next means of outreach might need to be a little less modern.
“My next plan is to maybe send a carrier pigeon,” she wrote.
Motor1 reached out to Amanda via direct message and comment on the video and to Progressive via email. We’ll update this if either responds.
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