Just some background, my father owns and operates his own auto body business, so this is where my knowledge comes from. To answer your question, yes and no. When they say you can't file another claim on the car, they mean a couple things: 1) you can't file any sort of claim in relation to the damage that was caused by Derecho (assuming hail damage etc). They will have pictures of the damage on file. 2) That does NOT mean you cant ever make a claim ever again though. In your example, if you total your car, they still are required to give you full out to replace your car at its value of the time accident (miles and year of vehicle come into play). The real battle you will fight will be if say you get into a much smaller accident. The insurance company is gonna be a real pain in the a$$ and try not to pay to fix things that had previous damage on them and will say "oh that damage was from Derecho and not the one you just got into" Obviously if you have a good auto body shop they will go to bat for you.
@1100011CS A part I left out but is very important, is that if you get into another smaller accident, say you hit a deer 6 months from now, they will prorate all the parts. So for instant, say they gave you $300 dollars for dentless repair on the hood. They will look at it and say "Well we already gave him 300 dollars and he didn't fix it, so he only gets $100 now" and you'll be stuck with the rest of the bill. As @ISUAgronomist said, settle your claim, then dump the insurance company. It will not be worth it trying to deal with them after the fact. Plus, you really should be changing insurance companies every 3 years. Those people are organized crime and would love nothing more than to never pay a cent in claims
Oh,. I agree with that last part. If I get another scratch on the hood I decided not to fix I wouldn't expect them to pay. But, if a whole tree falls on it and they won't pay because I didn't get a little scratch fixed a year ago, I'd be pissed.
