Auto insurance abuse and fraud has become quite a problem in the past few years as there was a rise in fraud reports and diversification of schemes used to affect fraud victims. It has come to the point where many drivers feel that the auto insurance quotes and rates they get are too high because of the abundance of fraudulent claims filed to insurance providers. In fact, each claim filed by using an abuse or fraudulent scheme ultimately leads to the overall increase in rates for all consumers, who even didn't face fraud on their own.

In order to minimize the risk of auto insurance fraud and abuse, and protect lawful car owners from becoming victims of illegal schemes, insurance providers and experts recommend following these five helpful tips that will protect you paying for an abusive claim:

1. Contact your insurance provider as soon as possible when ending up in an accident. You may want to call your insurance representative before calling the police, in order to provide all the information regarding the accident. You will be informed about the right repair shops, legal advisors and rental car services to use. Quite often these third party representatives make part of fraudulent schemes.

2. Only use repair shops preferred by your insurance provider or you are common with. In many cases fraud schemes involve certain repair shops that charge higher rates for making a standard repair and abusing your insurance claim.

3. Be cautious about the towing companies that arrive to the site of the accident. You may end up dealing with a towing company that receives referral fees for directing customers to specific repair shops or other services that will charge you more than your insurance company's preferred providers.

4. In case you're injured during the accident and have to use medical services, keep track of all the treatments, prescriptions and doctors you receive care from in order to compare the records with your insurance provider later. Sometimes inaccuracies in these records can be a sign of insurance fraud that will ultimately reflect in your insurance rates.

5. Never sign blank documents or any contracts or forms without reading them first a towing truck driver, repair shop worker, legal advisor or medical care provider will give you. In many cases fraudulent contracts are offered for signing during stress that the victim goes through after and accident. And later you may be legally obliged to pay for things you didn't expect.

Always make sure to get auto insurance quotes from a company willing to fight and investigate fraudulent acts or insurance abuse. It's a matter of customer support, and if your provider doesn't want to deal with things like that, obliging you to pay higher premiums regardless whether you were a victim of a fraud scheme or not, you definitely don't want to insure your auto with such a provider. So get your auto insurance quotes from an insurer that you can really trust. Otherwise you may end up paying more money and being a victim of insurance abuse someone makes money from.