Anyone living in the Zollikerberg area will probably have noticed that everything was completely devastated this morning by an insane hail storm. It was more like random pieces of ice falling from the sky than hailstones, but the net result was the same - if your car was outside it now has the same surface texture as a golf ball.

This happened to me a few years back but I thought I'd just give a little bit of advice based on my experience.

What the insurance companies tend to do is set up places where everyone with hail damage can take their car for inspection. Basically some expert looks over your car, counts the number of dents and the size/location of them and estimates how much it will cost to repair. Based upon this estimation, you will be given two choices:

1) Take the cash equivalent of the estimation
2) Get your car repaired

When this happened to me previously the cash offer they made me turned out to be around 2000.- less than what the actual bill was from the garage that did the work. Thus, unless you are happy to drive around with a car covered in little dents, are prepared to fix the car yourself or know a friendly garage that can do it for cheap, you're much better off getting the car repaired.

Here's the Zurich insurance web page for hail damage, in case its useful for anyone:
http://www.zurich.ch/site/en/sforms/...ser/hagel.html

Sorry to hear about such a storm and anyone's property that is damaged.

If you're with Zurich, have vehicle damage and have the casco cover we do indeed set up the hail help points. The only other benefit to having the car repaired and to bear in mind is You receive a lifetime warranty for the repairs.

If you have building damage and it has been deemed an act of God by the Kanton then repairs are claimed off the Kanton insurance.

Paintless dent removal is good for some hail stone damage.

Car dent repair ? - Zurich area

Thanks for the tips.

Our car got bombarded this morning, too, before my husband was able to jolt out of bed and race out to drive it in to the garage. Luckily we only have 2 or 3 dents, in comparison to others in the neighbourhood that were slower / on holiday that got 100s of them .

Hoping it doesn't cost us 7000 chuffs to get them bonked out, like this news article from this time last year suggests:

http://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/aargau...auto-111313182

Cheers

Puddy

Here in Oerlikon every single plant in my garden was completely destroyed by the hail this morning. Not a single leaf is left, just a few broken stalks.

And I had just spent an hour weeding yesterday dammit.

At least this isn't your car or garden.

I feel for you, same thing happened to us last summer, lost all the trees and bushes some fortunately recovered this year but it looked like a bomb site and was coupled to 10k worth of damaged shutters.

Unfortunately one cannot claim for garden plants, lights fixtures and fittings.

Hit us really hard and there was no way we could save anything. The roof gutter seemed to get clogged with hail and so all the water ran down the roof like a waterfall onto the grass which resembles a mud swamp now. The car looks like it came out of the popcorn machine and the pool cover resembles a sieve with all the holes. The worst was the kids slide - thick hard plastic designed to be unbreakable had a big wonker hole in it and shall need to be repaired. thank goodness nobody got hit by a falling hail glob as that would for sure have knocked them out.

Our next door village had no hail at all so it seems that not everyone was hit. Trying to see now what we can claim from the insurance but it was an experience that I would not like to have again. Till eleven at night we still had a deep pile of hail in the garden.

Very sorry to hear about your run in with the hail... we got hit two weeks ago, and I swear, it was like a war zone...

In all of my life, I always heard of golf ball sized hail but really never believed it, until I saw it first hand....

I picked up this piece but it melted some before I could get my camera on it..



Best of luck

i was in kansas and we had hail the size of tennis balls - everything was destroyed

that is just crazy.... i bet it sounded like a massive attack

My sympathies to those who sustained damage in this storm... and an FYI for gardeners:

We were hit with a similar storm last July. The garden was destroyed; the fruit trees especially took quite a beating - and we are still feeling the effects this year.

Apparently the damaged bark leaves the tree more susceptible to fungus infections the following year(s), especially when you have a wet fall/spring the following year. Trees that normaly are disease resistant are being hit this year, because they were so weakened from last year's hail storm.

In addition to losing our fruit to the hail last year, we are likely going to lose the cherry trees this year to Schrottschusskrankheit. (And the local paper is tying an outbreak of Feuerbrand to weakened trees due to last year's hail storm damage.)

So - if your trees have sustained bark damage, consider getting a pro out this summer to look at them and make recommendations.

Had I taken steps last fall or even in early spring I might not have lost my trees.

I forgot to add something important in a previous post:

Please be aware if you were to take the cash settlement from a hailstone or natural hazard claim on a motor vehicle as opposed to getting it repaired you are no longer eligible to make further such claims.

I.e. you take a cash settlement for this years hail storm and have the car repaired out of the money personally if there was a storm next year and new damage you would be unable to claim on the insurance.

It might not be as cut and dry or as attractive an alternative as it may seem on the surface; just a heads up.

EXCELLENT info!

Just seen my car has a bonnet & roof like a golf ball surface. Didn't notice it the other day as it was raining, but yesterday it caught the light & is pitted all over.

Thanks for the useful info Saint7UK. Glad I'm fully comp!

My car was pretty badly scarred by a hailstorm back in July (still waiting for the insurance company to send an inpsector since they are overwhelmed). There are about 20 small indents on the roof and 10 or so on the bonnet. I've watched various Youtube videos on how they remove them but just wanted to see what the experience of others is.

Can they restore the bodywork to a perfect glasslike finish? or will there always be telltale signs which look worse on a dark car?

Noooooooo, the new one?

Yup
Also any recommendations for early warning weather apps had I known there would be hail I would have parked it in the Migros carpark for the day.

MeteoSwiss https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ss&hl=en&gl=US

But, alerts don't work for such small clouds. All you can do is look for hail warnings a day before or the same day in other regions because that means " hail weather conditions". Then take a look at the radar precipitation map and if something ugly is coming, protect the car.

The heterogeneity caused by all those mountains is still not captured in numerical weather models. Hail clouds are 1-2 sq km in size (looked from above), so really really damned hard to predict accurately.

I'm curious as well. Our car is a dark gray color and was also damaged by the hail storm(s) this summer. My husband just recently took it for an appointment to have it looked at, and they're going to be repairing the damage next month. I believe it's all being covered by our insurance.