My car got hit while parked at a hotel
Okay, I usually don’t seek advice online, but at this point I’m looking for some community insight because I’m really not getting many answers.
Story time:
We were visiting Columbus for a family member’s graduation and decided to turn it into a weekend trip. I booked a hotel room for two nights. After the graduation, we came back to the hotel around 7:30 p.m. to rest for about an hour before heading home.
I decided to stay up and clean up the room while loading the car. Around 8:10 p.m., I went downstairs to my car. As I was opening the trunk, the front desk receptionist asked, “Is this your car?”
I said, “Yeah. Do I need to move it?”
He replied, “No, someone reported a hit-and-run, and we have it all on video.”
At first I was confused and thought he meant my car had hit someone else. Then he said, “No sir, your car was hit. Look.”
I walked around to the passenger side and saw a huge dent in my front fender. The receptionist told me not to worry because the hotel had surveillance footage of the incident. He then showed me the other vehicle, which was parked on the opposite side of the hotel at the time. I took pictures of the damage, the other vehicle, and its license plate before going back to my own car to document everything there too.
We went inside to review the footage while I was on the phone with police dispatch. Dispatch told me it would probably take a while for an officer to arrive because there were a lot of events happening in the area.
The receptionist also mentioned he believed the driver was staying at the hotel.
It took about 20 minutes for the receptionist to pull up the footage, and police still hadn’t arrived by then. When we reviewed the video, it clearly showed the other driver attempting to back into a parking spot between my car and another vehicle around 8:05 p.m. He was going way too fast and didn’t turn sharply enough. He slammed directly into my car, then quickly drove off and parked on the other side of the building.
The video then showed him getting out, inspecting the damage to his own rear bumper, rubbing the paint transfer with his hand, and walking back into the hotel. At that point, it was obvious he knew he had hit another vehicle.
About 30 minutes later, I went back outside and his vehicle was gone. He had apparently collected his things and left the hotel before police even arrived.
At the time, I wasn’t too worried because I had:
the license plate,
pictures of the vehicle,
surveillance footage,
and proof that the driver knowingly left the scene after inspecting the damage.
The frustrating part is that police didn’t arrive until FOUR HOURS later.
The officer took basic information
ID, insurance, what happened , whether I wanted a report filed.
I also told him the plate had fleet tags. The officer explained that rental cases can sometimes be difficult because they don’t immediately know whether the person driving was the actual renter. He said he would review the footage and attempt to track the vehicle, but since it was a rental and had such a large head start, he wasn’t very optimistic.
At that point, the driver could’ve been halfway to Kentucky.
The officer eventually told me to return to my room and said he would contact me if he needed anything else.
The next morning, I contacted my insurance company. I honestly hesitated because I know filing claims can affect premiums, but I submitted all the evidence anyway.
My insurance company told me:
- I would need to pay my deductible upfront to repair my vehicle
2.They would try tracing the plates to determine the rental company, and IF they successfully identified the responsible party’s insurance, I would eventually be reimbursed for my deductible.
I asked whether I could simply contact the rental company myself because at this point i'm frustrated and wanted to hold the driver accountable, but the representative told me it’s more complicated than that and said the process could take around two weeks.
So now I’m left wondering if I should’ve stayed outside and watched for the other vehicle instead of assuming this would be easy to resolve.
I always thought rental vehicles would be simple to trace through license plates, but both the police and my insurance company made it sound much more difficult.
Has anyone been through something similar? If so, what was your experience like, and how did things end up turning out?