# Insurance Help for RV, Camper and Truck Claims > Most work at OCRV Center is paid by a carrier, not a card. We write the estimate, photograph the damage, file supplements when teardown finds more than the adjuster saw, and bill Progressive, GEICO, State Farm, AAA SoCal, Mercury, Allstate, Liberty Mutual and others directly. You choose the shop. California law protects that choice, and a collision estimate carries no charge. Source: https://ocrv.biz/insurance/ Business: OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. (949) 799-3387. Serving Tustin, California. ## Why is an RV claim harder than a car claim? Because almost none of the industry's tooling was built for it. A standard auto estimate is written inside an estimating database that already knows the labor time to remove a specific fender on a specific model. No equivalent database exists for a laminated sidewall, a hydraulic slide room, a one piece front cap or a reefer box liner. The adjuster assigned to your file may be excellent at sedans and have never written a single line for butyl tape or a wiper seal. The second problem is size. A Class A diesel pusher is forty five feet of structure, a house electrical system, a plumbing system, an LP system and a chassis, all of which can be damaged in one impact. A rear corner hit that looks like a bumper job frequently turns out to have racked the slide opening, torn the sidewall lamination and pulled the roof membrane loose at the seam. None of that shows in a photograph taken in a tow yard. The third problem is comparables. A total loss calculation needs similar vehicles that recently sold. For a bus conversion, a vintage Airstream or a custom van build, those do not exist in the same way they exist for a three year old crossover. That single gap drives more disputed settlements than any other factor in this category. ## Who actually chooses the repair shop? You do. In California the vehicle owner names the repair facility, and a carrier may not require you to use a specific shop as a condition of paying the claim. Carriers are allowed to recommend a direct repair program shop, and they will, because a program shop has agreed to a negotiated labor rate and a set of process concessions in exchange for volume. That arrangement is not automatically bad. It is simply not built around a forty foot vehicle. Most program shops in Orange County have a maximum door height, a lift rating and a paint booth length that rule out anything past a long wheelbase van. When a rig gets steered to a facility that cannot physically take it, the repair gets sublet, marked up and re invoiced, and you end up with two shops and one accountability gap. We bill sixteen carriers directly, including Progressive, GEICO, State Farm, AAA SoCal, Mercury, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Wawanesa, National General, CSAA, Foremost, Tesla, Cincinnati and AGWS. Direct billing means the carrier pays us and you handle your deductible, not that the carrier gets to write the repair plan. Insurance billed work may be written at carrier negotiated labor rates that differ from our posted retail rates, and we will tell you when that applies to your file. ## What does the estimate cost? A collision estimate carries no charge, and insurance walk ins are welcome. Bring the rig, or bring photographs and the claim number if it is not drivable, and we will write a documented estimate against the damage. Two other evaluations are priced because they are diagnostic work, not a walk around. An RV systems estimate covering slide, awning, water intrusion, electrical or generator faults is $150, applied as a credit against an authorized repair. An in depth diagnostic is 1 hour at $285, also applied as a credit. Those exist because finding an intermittent 12 volt fault or tracing a leak path back through a laminated wall is genuinely hours of technician time, and quoting it blind would mean guessing at your expense. Everything is priced against the same posted rate card the rest of the site uses. Body and paint labor is $210 per hour. Mechanical and electrical is $260 per hour. Diagnostics, scan and programming is $285 per hour. Detail is $95 per hour. Paint supplies calculate at $55 per paint hour and body supplies at $5 per body hour on every estimate, with a $45 hazmat line and sales tax at 7.75 percent on parts and materials. Labor is not taxed. Publishing those numbers is unusual in this trade and it is deliberate: an adjuster reviewing our estimate can see exactly how every figure was built. See the [full posted rate card](/prices/). ## What is a supplement, and why does everyone talk about it? A supplement is a second estimate filed after the vehicle is opened up, covering damage that could not be seen from the outside. On large vehicle work it is not an exception, it is the normal case. The first estimate is written on visible damage. The real estimate exists after teardown. The mechanics matter. A supplement has to be submitted with photographs, part numbers and a labor justification, then reviewed, then approved, before a technician is allowed to continue. If a shop opens the wall, finds rotted framing behind it and keeps cutting without approval, the carrier is entitled to decline that portion and the owner eats it. So the correct behavior looks like a pause, and owners often read the pause as the shop being slow. We document at teardown as a routine step: date stamped photographs of every concealed area, moisture readings where water intrusion is suspected, and a written line entry explaining the operation and the hours. That package goes to the adjuster in one submission rather than three, because each round trip costs days. More on the sequence on [how claims work](/insurance/how-claims-work/). ## Where does the money actually go? A settlement is rarely one check. Understanding the pieces is the difference between feeling cheated and knowing what you are owed. **Actual cash value**: What the vehicle was worth immediately before the loss. It drives total loss decisions and it is where comparables fight. **Deductible**: Your share, subtracted once per covered occurrence. It is owed to the shop at pickup, not to the carrier. **Betterment**: A charge back to you when a worn part is replaced with a new one, for example a tire or a roof membrane near the end of its service life. **Depreciation holdback**: Money withheld until the repair is complete on a replacement cost policy, then released. Some policies never release it. **Loss of use**: Rental or accommodation reimbursement, almost always capped by day and by total, and almost always shorter than a structural RV repair. **Salvage retention**: If you keep a totaled vehicle, the salvage value is deducted from the settlement and the title is branded. Read [deductibles, depreciation and betterment](/insurance/deductible-and-depreciation/) for how each of those gets calculated and which ones are negotiable. ## What if the carrier and the shop disagree? Disagreement is normal and it has a procedure. The first level is a line item conversation between our estimator and the adjuster: hours on an operation, whether a panel is repairable, whether a part is available new. Most disputes end here because most are informational, not adversarial. An adjuster who has never seen a delaminated sidewall is not being difficult, they are working without a reference. The second level is a field reinspection. The carrier sends an independent appraiser to physically look at the vehicle. We keep the teardown staged so a reinspection can happen without another disassembly cycle, which is one of the practical reasons parts and panels stay tagged and stored rather than scrapped. The third level is the appraisal clause, which sits in nearly every policy and which most owners have never heard of. Each side hires an appraiser, the two appraisers select an umpire, and the resulting valuation binds the amount of loss. It exists specifically for disagreements over value and it costs far less than litigation. We cannot invoke it for you, because it is your contract, but we will tell you when the file has reached the point where it is the right move. ## What kinds of losses come through here? Collision claims are the largest group: rear impacts, side swipes into a lane divider, low clearance hits that shear an air conditioner and open a roof seam, and jackknife damage on towed trailers. Structural collision work on a large motorhome runs $1,000 to $150,000 depending on what the frame and the cap look like underneath. Comprehensive claims are the second group and often the more contested one: hail, falling branches, fire, theft of a generator or catalytic converter, vandalism, and water intrusion where the cause is a covered event rather than gradual wear. That last distinction is where more claims get denied than anywhere else, because a policy will pay for a tree limb through the roof and decline the same rot if the sealant simply failed over years. Commercial files behave differently again. A box truck or a fleet van has downtime cost attached, and the carrier, the lienholder and the fleet manager all want different things. Fleet collision repair and refinish runs $1,500 to $50,000, and on those files we sequence work so the units come back in a usable order rather than all at once. ## How do I start if I have a claim number already? Call the shop and give us the claim number, the carrier and the adjuster's name if you have it. That lets us open a file on our side and request the assignment before your vehicle arrives, which removes a day or two from the front of the process. Then get the vehicle to the shop at 23281 La Palma Ave in Yorba Linda. From central Tustin that is the 55 north to the 91 east, roughly twenty five minutes if it still drives. If it does not drive, say so on the call and we will talk through flatbed logistics and where to have it set down so the driver is not deciding on arrival. Bring your declarations page if you can find it. Not the ID card, the declarations page, which lists coverage types, limits, deductibles and whether you carry Agreed Value, Total Loss Replacement or actual cash value. Ten minutes with that document at the start changes what we recommend, and it is the single most useful thing an owner can bring through the door. ## Questions ### Do I have to use the shop my insurance company recommends? No. In California you name the repair facility and the carrier pays the covered amount regardless. A carrier may recommend a direct repair program shop, and that recommendation is legitimate, but it is not a requirement and it cannot be made a condition of settling your claim. ### Will filing a claim raise my premium? That is a carrier underwriting decision and no shop can answer it honestly. What we can tell you is that a not at fault comprehensive loss is treated differently from an at fault collision by most carriers, and that unreported water intrusion tends to cost far more later than the premium effect of reporting it now. ### Who pays my deductible? You do, and it is due to the shop at pickup rather than to the carrier. Any shop offering to absorb or waive a deductible is billing the carrier for money it is not collecting, which is insurance fraud in California and puts your claim at risk along with their license. ### Can you talk to my adjuster directly so I do not have to? Yes, that is the normal arrangement. We write the estimate, submit the photo documentation, file the supplements and handle the line item negotiation. You stay in the loop on decisions that are yours to make, such as betterment and whether to accept a total loss offer, but you are not the one on the phone. ### How long does an insurance repair take on a motorhome? Labor hours are predictable and calendar time is not. A five hour bumper job can sit for three weeks waiting on an approval, while a two hundred hour structural rebuild can move steadily if the carrier is responsive and the parts exist. Approval time and parts availability, not technician availability, set the schedule. ## Related - [How Insurance Claims Work](https://ocrv.biz/insurance/how-claims-work/) - [Top 25 Pitfalls Insurance Companies Do Not Tell You](https://ocrv.biz/insurance/top-25-pitfalls/) - [Repair or Replace, How the Decision Gets Made](https://ocrv.biz/insurance/repair-vs-replace/) - [What To Do After an Accident](https://ocrv.biz/insurance/after-an-accident/) - [Deductibles, Depreciation and Betterment](https://ocrv.biz/insurance/deductible-and-depreciation/) - [Getting Your Vehicle Back Faster](https://ocrv.biz/insurance/getting-your-vehicle-back-faster/) - [Collision Repair](https://ocrv.biz/services/collision-repair/) - [Prices and Posted Rates](https://ocrv.biz/prices/) - [Request a Quote](https://ocrv.biz/contact/)