If you have had the misfortune of being involved in an accident, you are probably under a lot of stress right now. You have to first take care of all the injuries that have been sustained by your passengers. You have to also make sure that there is no long lasting disability as a result of negligence on your part. But in the mean time, there is also the other part about filing claims with your auto insurance company and also sending your car to a repair facility.
Filing a claim can get pretty complicated. Any normal individual with a full time job will know that there is practically no time to do anything else but go about day to day activities. And then the bombshell is dropped. You need to do a lot of extra paper work and also talk to a lot of different people and research a subject which you might not know anything about.
And then after all that, you have to make crucial decisions. One major decision that you have to take is to decide whether to go with Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts or with other ancillary part makers. This decision can have long standing consequences to you.
An OEM part is the original part that the car manufacturer uses in the vehicle in the assembly line. It is usually at least twice as expensive as a comparable non OEM part. And obviously you will get a performance guarantee if you go with an OEM part. This is because the company has already tried and tested the part and can stand by you if there were something to go wrong with it. If you use a non OEM part, you will not only have warranty for the part but you will also lose any warranty that you had on the vehicle on behalf of the automobile manufacturer.
And also there is the question of whether or not your auto insurance company will cover the OEM part. A majority of the auto insurance companies do not recommend the usage of an OEM part. This is because of the exorbitant cost that they will have to bear. If you decide to go ahead with an OEM part in any case, you will have to bear the additional cost that will be incurred over and above the estimate that the company furnishes to you. So what are the cases in which an OEM part is justified?
If you have a really high end car or a classic automobile and you want to retain its value, you will have to invest in an OEM part. This is because; use of a non OEM part will cut the resale value of a car by a huge margin. Potential buyers will want to see the repair reports and service reports when they are investing in your vehicle. If they see a non OEM part, they will be most likely to ask for a discount. A Mercedes Benz with non Merc parts will have a much lower value than a car in mint condition. In such cases, it is well worth the cost to pitch in for the repairs. But if you own a tin can, you can very easily put in a refrigerator parts and make it work without affecting your resale value. Correction, scrap value.
