A standard policy pays what it thinks the car is worth.

It means the carrier settles at what it determines the vehicle was worth immediately before the loss, rather than at what you paid for it, what you still owe on it, or what an equivalent vehicle costs to buy today.

Depreciation is built into that figure. For a typical vehicle a few years old, actual cash value and the cost of replacing it are usually close enough that the distinction never becomes an issue, which is why most people never think about it. The gap opens on vehicles where those two numbers are not close. Something bought above market, something that has held its value unusually well, something specialist or low volume, or a vehicle bought recently enough that depreciation has outpaced the loan. There are policy options that change how a total loss is settled and which are available depends on the vehicle and the carrier. The useful step is knowing which basis your current policy uses, which is stated on it rather than being a matter of opinion.

Not necessarily, and this is one of the more consequential settings on a policy that almost nobody checks.

Standard auto policies commonly permit the use of aftermarket or recycled parts in repairs, and for a great many vehicles and a great many repairs that is entirely unproblematic. Where it matters is on vehicles where the parts used affect fit, safety systems, resale or a manufacturer warranty, and on those the difference between an original equipment part and an alternative is not cosmetic. Some carriers offer an endorsement or a policy form that requires original manufacturer parts, and availability varies by carrier and by vehicle. What your current policy says about it is written into the policy language rather than being a matter of negotiation after an accident. If the vehicle is one where this matters to you, it is worth establishing before a claim, because it is not something that can be changed once a car is already in a body shop.

Diminished value is the difference between what a vehicle was worth before an accident and what the same vehicle is worth afterwards, repaired properly, simply because it now has an accident on its record.

On many vehicles that difference is small enough to ignore. On some it is substantial, and it exists whether or not the repair was excellent. Whether anything responds to it is a genuinely complicated question. It depends on the policy language, on whether you were at fault, on whose insurance is involved, and on the specific facts, and the answer is different when you are claiming on your own policy than when you are claiming against somebody else's. We are not going to tell you from a web page whether you could recover it in a given situation, because that would be advice we are not in a position to give responsibly. What we can tell you is what your own policy says on the subject, which is a better starting point than most people have.

Start with the local point at the top of this page, then read the policy as two separate halves, because people conflate them constantly.

The first half is liability, and it is sized by what you might damage rather than by what you drive. Property damage liability pays for the other vehicle, and Arkansas's minimum is a legal floor rather than a recommendation, so a modest limit and a late-model luxury vehicle are a bad combination whatever you happen to drive yourself. Bodily injury liability sits alongside it. The second half is uninsured and underinsured motorist plus comprehensive and collision, which is the part that responds to your own losses and scales with what you own and what you could replace. Those two halves genuinely answer different questions, and a policy can be perfectly sensible on one and badly wrong on the other. What each coverage does is set out on our auto insurance page.

No.

A fair number of the reviews we do end with us saying the policy is already right, and that is a perfectly good outcome. We would rather be the agency you call in three years when something has changed than the one that pushed you into moving before there was a reason to. What a review costs you is the time it takes to find your declarations page and a short conversation. What it is worth is knowing where you stand rather than assuming, particularly on the liability side, where the number that matters is the one you would need on the worst day rather than the one that came with the policy. If a different market fits your household better, we will say so and show you why.

Because carriers price the same household very differently, and a single company can only ever offer you its own answer.

Rating turns on drivers, vehicles, mileage, garaging address, coverage history and claims, and each company weighs those on its own filed rules, which is why two quotes built from identical information can be a long way apart. There is a second reason that matters more than price. Raising a liability limit is usually far cheaper than people assume, and the conversation about whether it is worth doing is one a captive agent has less room to have. We place across more than forty carriers, so the same household gets looked at by several sets of rules, and we can tell you plainly when what you already have is competitive, because we have nothing to gain from moving it if it is.