Accidentally reported a minor accident on my car - what now?

Question

A few days ago I idiotically scraped the side of my car against a concrete column. There was no damage done to the column and no dents on my car, but there is a significant amount of scratches on my car. The kicker is this car is only about 6 months old.

The real mistake may have come when I called my insurance company (US insurance company that seems to be fond of geckos) today. Originally I just wanted to call and see what my coverage is for cases like this, without filing any claim. Well I wasn't thinking straight and am fairly inexperienced still, so I ended up filling a claim with my insurance company, but deciding not to use my coverage to pay any of the repair expenses.

Once I realized that what I had actually done is file a claim, I called back and asked them to cancel it, which they could not do, but they did close the claim for me.

Now my main concerns, in order of priority are:

1. Will this be reflected on my carFax or similar services for accident reporting?

2. Will this cause my insurance rates to go up?

Answer 1

Will this cause my insurance rates to go up?

Unlikely. What the insurance company cares about is do they have to pay a claim. If they don't pay anything then they don't care about the accident.

It isn't clear to them that they would have paid a claim. They would have to know the cost of the repair, and only if it exceed the amount of the applicable deductible would they have paid any money. So unless you got an estimate before talking to them, they have no way to judge the size of the claim.

Will this be reflected on my carFax or similar services for accident reporting?

It depends on the source of that data in the Carfax database. If it is insurance company then it is unlikely because they don't have anything to report. If they get data from the car repair place you end up using, then that data might show up in the report even if there is no insurance claim.

Source: Collision repair facilities

Types of data provided to CARFAX:

• Accident indicators, including:
• Structural/frame damage
• Collision repair history

How the data can help you make a better used car buying decision

• Uncover past accidents that resulted in repairs

Source: Insurance companies

Types of data provided to CARFAX:

• Total loss vehicles
• Stolen vehicles

How the data can help you make a better used car buying decision

• Identify accidents which may not have resulted in salvage/junk titles