A car insurance firm has left an Arizona motorist, Manny Munoz, thousands of dollars in debt after refusing to pay out on a claim because he inadvertently paid 60 cents less than he should have for his $60,000 BMW X5. Munoz, a salesman from Peoria, purchased the vehicle in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, when car prices were inflated due to disrupted supply chains.
Munoz agreed to pay $60,517.86 for the then two-year-old vehicle, but his credit union mistakenly sent a check for $60,517.26, leaving a 60-cent discrepancy that went unnoticed until his car was totaled in an accident in November last year. The insurance company, Safe-Guard Products, used this minor error as a reason to deny his claim.
Munoz explained to azfamily.com, “The claim was kicked back because the loan amount did not match the contract amount. There was a 60-cent difference.”
He had financed the car and took out a gap insurance policy to cover the full amount, anticipating that the car’s value would depreciate rapidly from its pandemic-inflated price. However, when he was rear-ended later that year, the damage appeared superficial, but Safe-Guard deemed the car a total loss due to its many sensors and cameras.
Munoz still owed $45,000 on the car, but the insurance company only sent him a check for $26,709, which was the car’s value at the time of the crash.
Safe-Guard insisted that the amount paid and the amount charged had to match exactly for the gap policy to be valid, leaving Munoz with an outstanding debt of $18,651 and no car.
After seven months of unsuccessful negotiations with the Atlanta-based insurance firm, Munoz reached out to AZfamily’s consumer program On Your Side and its presenter Gary Harper. Munoz shared, “I was sitting there trying to contemplate what to do and so I went online, and I said let me find Gary Harper and here we are.”
Following contact from the program, Munoz received a promising letter indicating that his claim is now being “processed.” Despite this, he remains cautious and refuses to get his hopes up until he receives the full amount he is owed. “I don’t have a problem being patient because I think I’ve been more than patient,” he said.
This situation highlights the challenges consumers can face when dealing with insurance companies and the importance of addressing even the smallest discrepancies in financial transactions.
