So on June 25th, I hit a string of potholes and it did a number on my front wheel. It completely cut through the sidewall of the tire and bent the wheel. Some friends told me to file a claim with the city for the damage. I took a number of pictures of the potholes and damage, wrote my letter and sent it off to Hamilton Risk Management.

Here's some pics of the damage and potholes.









Last week I got a letter from Risk Management. It said that I would not be able to file a claim with them because the potholes are technically located in Burlington. Now the welcome sign for Burlington is not even on that street. Does anyone know if the city signs are normally right on the city boundaries?

Has anyone here ever done a claim with a city for pothole damage? Did you get anything back? I couldn't find much on Google, mainly just one article saying that claims typically weren't successful

I guess the good that's come out of this is that this was a good opportunity to pick up some new wheels Got a set of Seibon TE37's from Mike @ Vivid Racing

Here's a few pics of the car pre-drop

 

new rims looking sickkk. sucks about the tire. Let me know what happens with that. I have a friend in the same situation but he didnt file a claim yet

 

What's the harm in sending the letter to the city? Send a copy of your repair invoice with it? I have heard that in some cases they will reimburse up to 50% of the cost. If they say yes, you're in luck, if they say no you lost a buck in postage and photocopies

 

I did the same thing to mine. I hit a pot hole and it actually split my wheel about 11" down the center and bent the inner lip and of course flattened the tire.

I called and wrote the city. they eventually got back to me and said since they weren't aware of the pot hole before the accident, they wouldn't claim responsibility for it. Only if they knew about it prior and didn't fix it would they have taken responsibility.

Sux that we pay taxes to fix these crazy roads and they have these HUGE holes.




The Culprit

and the car

 

i had something similar happen to me with my old maxima. it was the next town over, a huge pothole in the middle of the road. i was making a u-turn and clipped the edge of it at night, not seeing it. tore my tire open and bent a wheel. i sent them multiple letters but i got no reimbursment. they did patch the pothole though. i just wish towns would be more on top of things like that. they know they are going to need to repair it one day anyway, why wait till someone damages their car and has to complain about it?

new wheels look great man! good luck with everything

 

Its common that the city says they never knew about the pot hole so they are not responsible. So make sure you have a friend or two phone them and tell them or write letters prior to you filing a claim. They might not do anything but it improves your chances.

 

Thanks for the advice and compliments I put some more pics in the first post.

I'll definitely be filing a claim with Burlington. I just have to pick up the pics from Hamilton then I'll send it off. I'll let everyone knows what happens.

GeeRider, tell your friend to submit a claim. I believe you only have a certain amount of time to file a claim in some cities. Plus like someone else said, it's basically free to submit a claim and if you could get some money back, why not

 

I damaged a rim going over a pot hole in the spring, when the hole was filled with water from the snow melt. I wrote the city and sent pictures. Others are correct, they will only reimburse if they have prior knowledge of the pothole and have not yet fixed it. Fortunately, there were previous complaints and I was reimbursed within a week. Unfortunately, I was too honest....they were about to send reimbursement for 2 rims/tires and I informed them it was only one!

 

Hopefully others have called them about it. The holes have since been filled. I also just checked the city boundaries for Hamilton and Burlington and it looks like it actually DID happen in Hamilton. Looks like this is gonna become a lot more of a pain now lol.

 

Thats a huge breakage on the side of the road, how could you not see it?

 

holy ****!! sorry to see that bro!! .... one of the reasons, why I HATE this city. they can't repair the roads but they spend it on all sorts of other bull****... this country has a weather problem so they should be putting more money to making sure the roads are taken care of... no matter how much effort/money it takes....