How to File a Hail Damage Claim in Texas: A Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Confirm you have comprehensive coverage

Hail damage to a vehicle is paid under comprehensive coverage (sometimes printed as "other than collision" or "OTC" on a Texas declarations page). Liability-only policies do not cover damage to your own car, no matter how severe the storm was. Collision coverage does not apply either, because nothing was struck in a collision sense.

Pull up your declarations page — it is usually a one- or two-page PDF in your carrier's app. Look for a line item labeled Comprehensive with a deductible amount next to it, commonly $250, $500, or $1,000 in Texas. If that line exists, hail is generally in scope. If it says "No coverage" or the line is missing entirely, filing will not produce a payment.

Step 2: Document the damage before you do anything else

Hail dents are notoriously hard to photograph. The dents are shallow and the paint is unbroken, so in flat midday light a badly damaged hood can photograph as a clean hood. Adjusters know this, but strong documentation still speeds everything up and keeps the conversation factual.

How to photograph hail damage properly

1. 1Shoot in the early morning or late afternoon, when low-angle sun rakes across the panels and casts a shadow inside each dent.
2. 2Get one wide shot of each side of the vehicle, plus the roof from a step stool or a second-story window.
3. 3Take close-ups of the hood, roof, trunk lid, and any horizontal surface, holding the phone nearly parallel to the panel rather than pointing straight down.
4. 4Photograph the odometer, the VIN plate in the windshield corner, and your license plate.
5. 5Photograph any broken glass, cracked mirror housings, or damaged trim separately.
6. 6Note the date and rough time of the storm, and save a screenshot of a local news or weather report confirming hail in your ZIP code.

If your windshield is cracked or a window is broken, get the vehicle under cover or tape plastic over the opening. Interior water damage from rain coming in after the storm is a separate problem that can complicate a claim, and carriers generally expect owners to take reasonable steps to prevent further loss.

Step 3: File the claim with your carrier

You can file through your carrier's app, on their website, or by phone. All three routes create the same claim number. After a large Texas storm, the app is usually faster — phone queues can run long for days.

What the carrier will ask for

• Policy number and the name on the policy
• Date and approximate time of the hailstorm
• The address or intersection where the vehicle was parked during the storm
• A short description of what panels are damaged
• Whether the vehicle is drivable and whether glass is broken
• Where the vehicle can be inspected

Answer factually and briefly. You do not need to estimate the cost of repair, guess at a dent count, or speculate about whether the car is a total loss. Those determinations come later, and guessing on the record helps nobody.

Step 4: The inspection and the first estimate

After a major storm, carriers typically use one of three inspection methods: a field adjuster who comes to you, a catastrophe (CAT) drive-in event at a hotel parking lot or fairground, or a photo-based virtual estimate you upload yourself.

Whatever the method, the first estimate is a starting point, not a final settlement. It is common for the true repair scope to be discovered only after a technician puts the vehicle under proper reflective lighting in a shop. That gap is what the supplement process exists to close — see what a supplement is and how it works.

Step 5: Choose your repair shop

In Texas, the vehicle owner chooses the repair facility. A carrier may recommend shops in a direct-repair network, and those programs can be convenient, but a recommendation is not a requirement. You can take the car to any licensed shop you trust, including a dedicated paintless dent repair facility.

For hail specifically, the technician's skill matters more than almost anything else, because most hail damage is repaired without paint. A shop doing hail work year-round on a dedicated line will typically find more damage and return a cleaner finish than a general body shop repairing its third hail car of the decade. Our team performs paintless dent repair and hail damage repair from a 25,000 sq ft facility on LBJ Freeway in Dallas, and a second shop at 1015 Avenue I in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

For a longer discussion of your rights here, read how choosing your own repair shop works in Texas.

Step 6: Teardown, supplement, and repair

Once the vehicle is at the shop, a technician performs a full inspection under hail lights — long fluorescent or LED boards whose reflected lines bend visibly over every dent. Headliners may be dropped to access the roof from underneath, and trim, moldings, and antennas are removed as needed.

If the shop finds damage or operations that the original estimate missed, it documents them and submits a supplement to the carrier. A shop that handles this directly with the adjuster spares you from playing telephone between two parties who both speak in estimating software line items. We submit and negotiate supplements on our customers' behalf as a standard part of the job.

Repair timelines vary with severity and parts availability. A light-hail sedan may be a two- or three-day job. A heavily dented truck with roof, hood, and bedside damage plus glass replacement can run one to two weeks, longer if a panel needs to be replaced and painted.

Step 7: How the money actually moves

Most carriers issue payment in one of two ways: a check to you (sometimes co-payable with your lienholder), or direct payment to the repair facility. When a shop bills the carrier directly, you generally are not fronting the repair cost and waiting for reimbursement.

Carriers calculate the payout as the agreed repair cost minus the deductible stated on your policy. For more on what the repair itself involves, see our hail damage and paintless dent repair services.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Waiting months to file. Policies require prompt notice, and proving a specific storm caused the damage gets harder as time passes.
• Accepting a photo-based estimate as final without a shop-level inspection.
• Signing a repair authorization with a storm-chasing pop-up outfit that has no permanent Texas address.
• Cashing a settlement check and skipping the repair on a financed vehicle, which can violate your loan agreement.
• Assuming the first number is the only number. Supplements are a normal, expected part of hail claims.

Frequently asked questions