Car lost or damaged? Insurance might save you

Mumbai: If you are one of those passengers who lost their car or your car broke down due to Tuesday’s heavy downpour, you may not need to worry, said insurance sources.  According to Insurance guidelines, rainfall or any other natural act comes under the claim of your Insurance if you have insured it.

Vehicles and property comes under ‘Non-Life Insurance’ and is claimable. On the other hand, several city-based garages put their best foot forward to help motorists tackle rain-induced problems including breakdowns. While over 30 per cent garages had shut down by 7 pm on Tuesday, the rest stayed open to repair malfunctioned vehicles.

“Common problems like a car being unable to start, the car’s battery down or the inner parts of the vehicle getting moisture, were seen yesterday (Tuesday),” told the owner of a garage at Hill Road, Bandra.

He further continued, “We were working till evening and we got more than 10-12 customers to repair their cars.” Most of the passengers preferred leaving their vehicle near the shop and went home walking. Another garage in Kurla was thrown open to people from Tuesday morning to Wednesday afternoon.

Ajay Gupta, a mechanic from Bandra said that he had received desperate calls from customers asking him to come and get their four wheelers started after they had stalled due to water seeping into the car. “Most of the complaints are of regular customers whose cars were submerged in the water while parked in their buildings. However, we got requests from vehicle owners from other parts of the city too whose vehicles got stalled near water logged areas in both Bandra (east) and Bandra (west),” said Gupta. Meral Ansari, a two-wheeler mechanic from Khar got a lot of ‘over adventurous’ two wheelers who dared to venture into water logged areas and got stalled as water entered the exhausts.

Meanwhile, Venkatesh Iyer, a Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) agent who was aware about the services and the passengers who broke their vehicles in the Tuesday rain said, “The vehicle claims to be intimated immediately to the concerned office with original estimate. The surveyor is allotted by the company and the claim is as per survey report and policy conditions.”

However, there is no fixed amount the passenger would get as each case is different and also the extent of damage is different.