Tampa Bay 28<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe salesman walked Moritz through filing a claim on the spot. Moritz called his insurance company later. He learned his rates and discounts could be affected by future claims.<\/p>\n
Florida Statute 627.7288 states that a deductible shall not apply to damage to the windshield, but filing a claim can still have consequences.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay 28 sent an employee to the same dealership for a tire rotation to test the sales approach. A Service Pros salesman told the employee that two chips on the windshield were through-and-through cracks. They couldn’t be repaired.<\/p>\n
“So for something like this, they just, they don’t affect your rates at all,” the salesman said when asked about insurance premium increases.<\/p>\n
Linda Rollison owns Superior Auto Glass of Tampa Bay and serves as a board member of the Auto Glass Safety Council. She looked at the same windshield, and her assessment contradicted the salesman’s claims.<\/p>\n
“It just hit the first layer. It didn’t even touch the laminate,” said Rollison. “Those are definitely repairable. There’s no reason to replace this windshield.”<\/p>\n
Under Auto Glass Safety Council standards, cracks shorter than a dollar bill and chips smaller than a quarter are considered repairable. A repair can cost between $60 and $150. A full replacement can go over $1,000.<\/p>\n
April Wilkins is an agent at the Dennis Insurance Agency in Lutz. She said a windshield claim can follow a policyholder for years. “That claim is going to stick with you for years to come, and your policy is going to potentially go up,” said Wilkins.<\/p>\n
Multiple comprehensive claims can lead to carriers canceling coverage due to high risk. Service Pros president William Camp declined an on-camera interview.<\/p>\n
The company’s attorney said the representative recommended a replacement without establishing that the damage could not be repaired, which went against company policy. The employee no longer represents the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tampa dealership has become ground zero for windshield replacement sales tactics that insurance agents warn could jack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4181,28,9503,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-407900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-cars","tag-florida","tag-insurance","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}