Collision claims (you hit something) goes against your record and will raise your premium. Comprehesive claims(something hits you) does not count against your driving record and will not raise your premium. For many years I have always had high($1,000.00)deductible on both coll. and comp. Because comp covers many different things, I now carry 100.00 deductible on comp. Comprehensive covers animals hitting your car, broken glass all around either by accident or vandalism, tree falling on your car, etc. I recommend pricing the different rates for comp and seeing what the dollar difference is. For my situation, where I park and drive, the lower comp deductible of $100.00 vs $1,000.00 only cost about $25.00 more a year for a possible $900.00 savings if I had a comp claim and remember that comp claims do not raise your premium.
My former car was smacked into on the street in the middle of the night by a drunk driver who then drove on. I called my independent insurance broker to find out if I had coverage. She told me that if I called the insurance company directly and asked about my coverage, they could raise my rates whether I decided to file a claim or not.
Emphasis on the word COULD. Any incident COULD enable them to increase your premium, but something like being hit by a hit and run is unlikely to. It would be a hard insurer to do so. It's the same here. The cheaper insurer would use any excuse to apply a load. A sensible and thus more expensive insurer will look on things in a sensible manner. Saying that, if you reported 3 similar incidents of hit whilst parked outside your house, there's obviously an issue there and thus it would be reasonable to increase the rates as one day you're going to make a big claim for a smashed car. A common view on insurance is to only claim when you hit someone, damage someones property or smash your own car badly. Anything else is questionable (unless it breaks the law).
