Reply With QuoteMy advice is to document the cheapest you can find, add in some other examples and then present them to your insurer along with a figure that you are prepared to accept from them.
R
Opinions sought.
Vehicle been deemed a loss. Had an offer just shy of £2.7k today. Can either be salvaged by insurance or retained by me for less.
Cheapest equivalent I can find to replace is £5250, but in worse condition than mine ( pre accident) or £6k a year newer and 10k less miles - and sold.
I assume come Monday I’m entitled to hold my ground to not accept a “trade” price offer.
TIA.
My advice is to document the cheapest you can find, add in some other examples and then present them to your insurer along with a figure that you are prepared to accept from them.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Refuse, and start pulling together evidence from car sales websites, and submit to insurance company. Be polite and stubborn.
They will try it on as many people will just accept the offer as it is the easiest thing to do.
The goal of an insurance company is to make money. That is capitalism for you.
It's actually being a business.Originally Posted by noTAGlove
Last edited by Chris_in_the_UK; 13th January 2023 at 21:41.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
That doesn’t make sense, but I’m sure you will edit.
Done - it's annoying but they will make money wherever they can.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I am in total agreement with you there. It is up to the individual to have the same mindset as well.
Agreed.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Try not to just look at auto trader for sale adds, the argument is that’s an asking price not a sold price.
Do use eBay sold listings, both the same spec & lower spec justify why you need x to replace with a real equivalent
If you can use a wbac quote do so
Also if you know anyone in the trade who can give you a book value do so
Do not let them move the car until you have agreed the value.
All very helpful.
Thanks to all who have replied.
Yes, essentially, they are a business and ultimately that goal is to make a profit.
I’ll document some evidence as suggested, and as stubborn as possible, hold my corner.
The most stubborn I could be rather than to accept a payment, is to suggest they replace the vehicle like for like, as best as possible. If they were to purchase the cheapest currently available, that will cost them £5250.
I have a local insurance director (that looks after vehicle and home) popping round today to look at some watches and show me an Explorer II SAS model over a cuppa ( he brought a very nice George Daniels round in a previous visit, so I’ll pick his brains on their current practice.
Although I’m on the board of an insurance broker we only deal with yacht/aircraft and private medical, so pretty useless in relation to your query.
It's just a matter of time...
If it’s a write off why not ask the insurance company to supply a replacement car, after all they asked you for the value of the car when they took your money.
Ok
Opinion seems to be that unless you are wanting to buy it and arrange a repair yourself (and take advantage of a low valuation, if that suits you better), then always reject the first offer and provide details of much higher valuations for a car similar age, mileage and condition.
One question he asked was, are you dealing with the insurance companies loss adjuster, or an appointed loss assessor? Both are supposed to be impartial, but loss adjuster is employed by the insurance company and may have some bias - but they are still accountable to their regulator, and have to be seen to treat customers fairly.
Have to say the SAS watch looked quite nice, but no real difference between it and my own EXPII 42mm, and I wouldn’t pay the difference.
Last edited by Omegamanic; 14th January 2023 at 17:33.
It's just a matter of time...
Interesting. I wrote my car off (bought 2 years ago for £9k) Thursday week ago, and received on offer from my insurers last Thursday. I'd obtained a valuation from WBAC as a worst case scenario (£8350, and then upped to £8445) but they used Glass's Guide to establish value and offered me £9700. I was pleasantly surprised.
I d/w a car write off claim a couple of years back and pretty much did as suggested above. This was to refuse the first offer and provide details of comparative vehicles within 100 miles. That resulted in a bit of a haggle over the phone and a much improved offer that was acceptable. I think in the main you nearly always lose out, if only because you are comparing your car, which is a known quantity to you, to another which is unknown but that's how it is.
Fwiw the insurer I d/w didn't offer to replace the vehicle and wouldn't agree to purchase the comparatives I'd identified!
One of my cars was financially written off just over a year ago, the first (and hopefully last) experience of such a situation.
I had a pretty good idea as to the car's value however when the insurance company called to advise me of proceedings I loaded up Autotrader in preparation for being lowballed and was pretty disgusted with a just-less-than 2/3 offer.... I politely yet firmly explained to the voice at the other end of the 'phone that I was looking, at that very moment, 5 near identical cars advertised at X, at which point I was asked if it'd be OK to be put on hold. Not two minutes later, maybe closer to one, the voice came back saying that they'd flicked through a different valuing reference and offered me something *much* closer to what I could see, which I accepted.
Not after I challenged the voice, though. I asked why the original offer was made, could they explain the mahoosive discrepancy, why was it so easy to challenge the first offer (my thinking was that they knew they were lowballing), what % of claimants accepted first offers, were they hoping people wouldn't challenge.... All answers were given in such a precise and flowing manner you'd swear that the voice was either a) extremely well trained in responding to such challenges (which implies such challenges are expected because they know what they're trying to get away with) b) the voice was well rehearsed (implying the same) or c) both. That and it took far too long to sort out - engineer not filing their report properly, system issues blah blah.
Boils my p just thinking about it though, to get to the point OP - CHALLENGE IT!
For comparison, it’s 167k miles, and in their own words good pre accident condition with no significant damage.
Their , based on Glasses guide, offer is £2680.
The lowest price available at £2700 is the same year, 07 reg, 266k miles, no V5, and has a running issue where it cuts
out.
Theres an early 05plate with a 3 litre engine, but they have issues, and bring a 3 ltr model, in my eyes, a different variant.
There’s one at. £5250 which has an interior with ripped seats, some sort of search light on the roof, a few marks around the body, a tailgate that doesn’t shut, and missing rear bumper.
I feel I could use that as some sort of benchmark - 20 k less miles than mine, but worse condition.
I ideally would like to retain the vehicle and get it repaired as having had it near 5 years, I have also kept it maintained with regular servicing , and major items like cambelt/water pump service, replacement clutch, hi spec tyres etc… so know it’s reliability.
It wasn't an insurance company with a name 'of rank', by any chance? I got the same "we know your car is in great condition and it has been looked after" blurb, and then they tried to screw me over.
Let them know what you've found via Autotrader/Pistonheads/ebay etc and see what they come back with. If they don't raise their offer I'll bung the fundraiser some £, update this thread when you know what's what.
On the internet, on a discussion forum, eveyone`s an expert!!
Your money is safe. They did up their offer to somewhere suitable.Not full replacement vale, but enough to make sure that I can get it repaired properly.In all honesty, didn't deserve to get written off, but them the breaks...
Donated anyway, and glad they upped their offer.
I’m currently going through the very same with our insurer on a total loss.
They’ve provided a settlement which is a trade price but obviously I need a retail replacement value which were £6000 apart on!
I’ve been able to provide written confirmation from two main dealers of what their forecourt price would be and now waiting for the car to be physically appraised once their salvage partner recovers it from the recovery compound.
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