FAQ's: Us & Our Facility

Here are a few of our most frequently asked questions. If your question is not answered within these parameters or if you need further details, please email us at: AFSAssociates@aol.com or call 561-832-6022.

We are happy to offer a courtesy consult to our clients. We occasionally do pro bono work as well, depending on the situation.

We provide a full range of photography & videography from a preliminary RUSH analysis to an elaborate presentation suitable for trial display, and everything in between. We also provide on-location, on-site and on-premises photographic services. Our formats of expertise are Digital Imaging and 35mm formats. Our standard as of January 2006 is Nikon Professional Digital Photo Equipment, 10.2 Megapixel, with GPS coordinates available, .jpg or Nikon RAW / .Nef to upwards of 15MB per photo for extremely large blow-ups and forensic photo analysis.

We provide accurate photographic studies of accident, crime scene, subject vehicles, exemplar vehicles and photographic comparison/scale layout.

If possible we prefer to examine and photograph subject and exemplar vehicles at a friendly facility in a controlled environment.

We will collect, organize, index and bind all photographs of record including Police Department, AIS photographs, homicide investigation photographs, insurance company photographs, and our own photo/evidence layout with index referring to the specific description of each subject photo. We provide self-extracting, auto playing presentation in CD Format for Microsoft or MAC.

Now, this is a very interesting, multi-faceted, question.

Did your insurance company advise you to bring your car to a specific shop? If so, and your suspicion is proven you may have recourse against your insurance company or the insurance company that paid for the repairs (if it was paid by some company other than yours) plus there are a variety of other legal remedies available to you.

If your inusurance company did not advise you to bring your car to a specific shop you still have a variety of legal remedies available.

If your car was repaired in a fashion that you suspect is unsafe or fraudulent it would require an inspection, analysis and report to commence a civil proceedure or launch a criminial complaint and prosecution.

Any shop that intentionally performs bad or unsafe repairs or does not supply you with the parts and/or service that have been "estimated, billed and paid for" is committing Fraud!

If your insurance company specified "non-original"* or "replacement"* parts or you have not been compensated for loss of value (due to the vehicle having been involved in a major collision or comprehensive loss) you also have recourse against your insurance company plus a variety of other legal remedies available to you.

(*)a "Non-Original" or "replacement" part often appears on your estimate ironically described as a "quality part" in the column of your estimate where the description is or where the OEM part number should be.

(*)These parts are usually anything BUT quality. They are most times manufactured in some Asian Country, e.g.Taiwan, China, Korea, etc. and are actually cheaper, "poor" quality, parts that will not stand up nor crash test like the Original (OEM) part.

There is much Case Law in States across the U.S., both pending and settled, on this subject involving insurance companies for this very reason. Many cases been resolved and many more that have not yet been resolved.

(*)In most instances the insurance companies that had been proven to specify replacement or non-original parts be placed on insureds' vehicles have been ordered to make multi-million dollar restitution type settlements.