Before you open the claim, get the number
There is one step worth taking first: find out what the repair actually costs. Send three photos — the damaged corner, a close-up, and a wide shot of the car — and a written estimate comes back within 24 hours, free. Then you can decide whether a claim is the right move, rather than filing first and finding out afterward.
When you do file, use your insurance company’s app, website, or the number on your insurance card, with the date, the location, the other driver’s details, and your photos ready. Name Prime Auto Body in Savage as the repair shop while you are on the call. For the avoidance of doubt, we are an independent shop with no affiliation to or endorsement from Kemper, and the insurance company is named here only to describe how such a claim proceeds.
The shop choice belongs to you
Minnesota Statute § 72A.201 treats steering as an unfair claims practice. Your insurance company cannot require a specific repair facility, and cannot use pressure or incentives to route you into one. Your policy pays the reasonable cost of restoring the vehicle to its pre-accident condition at the licensed shop you pick.
That right does not depend on the size of your policy or which coverages you carry. Whether you are on a full-coverage policy or the other driver’s liability is footing the bill, the decision about where the work happens belongs to the person who owns the car. An insurance company can recommend, and a good adjuster often will, but the file follows whatever name you give.
What the repair looks like here
The damaged area comes apart before the estimate is finalized, and everything behind it is photographed. That is how a repair plan ends up built on what is broken rather than on what is visible. When an impact reached the structure, the vehicle is measured against the manufacturer specification on the frame machine, and those readings go into your file.
Then the ordinary craft: panels repaired or replaced, sensors transferred and function-checked, color read off your paint and verified on a sprayed card before anything is applied, refinish blended into the panels alongside. The car is inspected, road tested, and cleaned before you get it back, and the paint carries a lifetime warranty.
- Free written estimate from photos within 24 hours
- Teardown-first estimating with full photo documentation
- Adjuster inspection hosted at our shop, not at a claims center
- Supplements filed with images and part numbers attached
- Lifetime warranty on all paint and refinish work
Deductibles, supplements, and one warning
If the first estimate is short — and on collision damage it usually is — we file a supplement with photographs, part numbers, and the operations required, then follow it to approval. Nothing extra is done to your car before you and your insurance have both seen and approved it.
About your deductible: be careful with any shop offering to make it disappear. That money has to come from somewhere, and it comes either from billing an insurance company for work not performed, which can implicate you, or from operations quietly skipped on your car. What we can do instead is tell you honestly when the repair sits close enough to the deductible that paying out of pocket makes more sense, and set up a payment plan when money is tight. If the other driver was at fault, their liability coverage pays and no deductible applies at all.
