Florida has a law most drivers here have heard about and very few have read. It is worth understanding before you call your insurance company, because for a chip repair the obvious move is often the wrong one.
What the Law Actually Says
Under Florida Statute 627.7288, if you carry comprehensive coverage on a private passenger vehicle, your insurer must cover windshield repair or replacement with no deductible applied. You do not pay the first several hundred dollars the way you would on most comprehensive claims.
Two limits on that worth knowing. It applies to the windshield, not to side or rear glass. And it applies to private passenger vehicles, so commercial and fleet policies are a different conversation and often do not carry the same protection.
Why Filing for a Chip Repair Often Is Not Worth It
Zero deductible sounds like free, and for a replacement it effectively is. For a chip repair the math is different, and this is the part people work out after the fact.
A chip repair runs $100 to $125 out of pocket. A claim, even a no fault comprehensive one with no deductible, still goes onto your claim history. Insurers price renewals partly on claim history, and carriers vary widely in how much a comprehensive claim moves your number.
If filing bumps your premium by $10 to $15 a month, that is $120 to $180 over the following year. You will have spent more than the repair cost to avoid paying for the repair. If you have other recent claims on file, the effect can be larger, because a pattern of claims reads differently than a single one.
The rough rule: for a $100 to $125 repair, paying out of pocket usually costs less over a year than the claim does. For a $400 or larger replacement, filing is worth it. The size of the job is what flips the answer.
When Filing Clearly Makes Sense
- The damage is genuinely beyond repair. A long crack, an edge crack, or damage through the driver's line of sight means a replacement, and that is a several hundred dollar job worth claiming.
- Your vehicle has driver assistance cameras mounted at the windshield. Replacement then requires recalibration, which adds meaningful cost on top.
- You have a large deductible on everything else and glass is the one place the law protects you.
For a repairable chip, most of our customers pay directly. It keeps the claim history clean and there is no paperwork.
How We Handle It
Straight up: we do not bill insurance. Chip Away is repair only and we take payment directly, so there is no claim to file through us and no adjuster in the middle.
That also means we have no financial reason to steer you toward a claim, toward a replacement, or toward anything else. We repair what can be repaired, we tell you when it cannot be, and the price is the same either way.
One thing we will not do is tell you what your specific policy covers. Carriers and policies differ, and the person who actually knows is your agent. What we can tell you in about a minute on the phone is whether the damage is repairable at all, which is the question that determines whether the insurance question even matters.
Not sure what you are looking at? Call or text a photo to (352) 234-4412 and Patrick will tell you straight whether it can be repaired. We come to you across Citrus, Marion and Hernando County.
Call (352) 234-4412