Star Casualty windshield replacement Arizona and Florida

Start with which state your policy was written in

Most carrier pages can pick a lane. This one cannot. We service Star Casualty claims on both sides of our footprint — Arizona and Florida — and the deductible rules in those two states are not variations on a theme. They are genuinely different laws with different triggers. Before you worry about scheduling, find your declarations page and confirm which state issued the policy, and whether the policy carries comprehensive coverage. Everything below hangs on those two facts.

Florida policies

Florida law (Fla. Stat. 627.7288) requires insurers to waive the deductible for windshield replacement when the policy includes comprehensive coverage.

Read that narrowly, because it is written narrowly. It applies to the windshield. It does not apply to your driver or passenger door glass, your quarter glass, your back glass, or a sunroof panel. Those are still covered losses under a comprehensive policy, but they run through your deductible the ordinary way. If you are calling about a smashed rear window on a Florida policy, expect a deductible conversation; if you are calling about a cracked windshield on a Florida policy with comprehensive, the waiver is the statute doing its job.

Arizona policies

Arizona law (A.R.S. 20-264) requires insurers to OFFER optional no-deductible safety-glass coverage.

The word doing the work there is "offer." Arizona does not hand you a waived deductible the way Florida does for windshields. It requires that the coverage be made available to you, which means at some point you either elected it or you did not. If you elected it, your declarations page will show a glass or safety-glass endorsement and your deductible for the glass loss should be zero. If you did not elect it, your normal comprehensive deductible applies. This is worth checking before you call rather than after — plenty of Arizona drivers assume the Florida rule applies everywhere, and it does not.

What the call itself tends to look like

Star Casualty publicly describes its claims as being handled by its own in-house staff, and that matches what we see on the ground. On these claims the customer is usually dealing with the carrier directly rather than being routed through a separate glass administrator. The practical consequence: you will most likely come away with a claim number, not a referral or dispatch number issued by a third-party network.

If nobody gives you a referral number, nothing has gone wrong and nothing is missing. Some carriers run glass through an outside coordinator that assigns its own dispatch number; on these policies that is generally not the pattern. Give us the claim number you were assigned, the date of loss, and the name on the policy, and we can work from that.

One point that is true in both states regardless of who answers the phone: you choose your own glass shop. That is your decision, not something that gets assigned to you.

Confirm comprehensive before anything else

Both statutes above sit on top of comprehensive coverage — sometimes printed as "Other Than Collision" or abbreviated "OTC" on a declarations page. Glass breakage is a comprehensive loss. A policy carrying liability only has no glass coverage to invoke, in either state, no matter what the glass laws say. If your declarations page shows liability and PIP but no comprehensive line, the statutes simply do not reach your situation, and it is better to learn that in your driveway with the paperwork in front of you than mid-appointment.

The vehicles behind these claims

Across Star Casualty work, the vehicles that come up most are Toyota, Mazda, Hyundai, Ram and Dodge — a mix of commuter sedans and crossovers alongside a solid share of trucks and vans. Most of what we replace on these claims is model year 2018 or newer, which puts the majority squarely in driver-assist territory.

On a 2018-or-newer Toyota with Toyota Safety Sense, a Mazda with i-Activsense, or a Hyundai with SmartSense, there is a forward-facing camera mounted to the windshield behind the mirror. That camera feeds lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise. Moving it — which replacing the glass necessarily does — means it has to be recalibrated afterward so the systems aim where the vehicle thinks they aim. Recalibration is not an upsell tacked onto the invoice; on a camera-equipped vehicle it is part of finishing the job correctly, and it belongs on the claim alongside the glass.

The Ram and Dodge side is more mixed. A recent Ram 1500 may well have a camera behind the glass; an older Dodge Grand Caravan, Journey or Charger frequently does not. When you call, having the year, trim and whether you have lane-keeping or adaptive cruise saves a round trip on parts and scheduling.

Older vehicles on these policies

A meaningful slice of this work is pre-2018, and those jobs have their own considerations. Older Dodge and Ram vehicles in particular have moldings and cowl trim that get brittle with age — Arizona sun and Florida humidity are both hard on them in different ways — and clips that have been through one prior replacement do not always survive a second removal. We would rather flag a molding or clip that needs replacing before we start than surprise you with it. On older vehicles we also check the pinch weld for corrosion once the old glass is out. Bonding new glass over rusted metal is how a replacement comes back as a leak, so if we find rust we will tell you what we are looking at rather than glue over it.

How the appointment works

We are fully mobile in both Arizona and Florida. We come to your home, your workplace, or wherever the vehicle is parked — there is no location for you to drive to and no waiting room. Next-day scheduling is what we aim for once the claim details are confirmed.

We need a reasonably level spot and enough clearance around the vehicle to work. Shade helps in either state; adhesive behaves differently in Phoenix heat than it does in a Florida afternoon, and we will tell you the safe drive-away time before we leave rather than leaving you to guess. Plan on the vehicle sitting for that interval.

One thing we do not do: chip repair. We are a replacement company. If your windshield is chipped rather than cracked through and you want it filled, that is a different service than the one we provide.

What to have ready when you call us

• Your claim number, if the carrier has already issued one
• Which state the policy was written in — Arizona or Florida
• Year, make, model and trim of the vehicle
• Whether the vehicle has lane departure warning, lane keeping assist or adaptive cruise control
• Which glass is broken: windshield, door, quarter, back glass or sunroof
• Where the vehicle will be parked for the appointment