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Getting stressed that my car might be written off after being rear-ended on Sunday. Really hate searching, choosing, buying cars (and driving them!), so please tell me that something positive will come of this?!
Was on my way to pick up new ebike. Hour and 10 min drive, hour into it, stopped in roundabout queue and Dacia Duster comes piling into the back of me. Insurance straightforward as all witness by a copper. But when I told the 3rd party's insurers the extent of the damage, computer came back with Write-off 🙁
Be happy you never had the bike on the back?
you did still get the bike?
Cat N or Cat S?
Brace yourself for a low valuation - stick your reg into WBAC and knock a bit off. Haggle at least once.
Is it repairable and if so for how much ? - might be worth buying back.
I've had 2 Cat N's in recent times and both valuations were about 75% of value of similar cars available on Autotrader. I let the 1st one go as the amount of paint required made it too expensive to repair, some guy who's brother worked in a paintshop bought it and fixed it back up to mint.
Bought back the 2nd one for buttons as it's just a dent in the boot - didn't bother repairing it and it's done me another 18 months and I got back 75% of what I paid for it.
Is it repairable and if so for how much ? - might be worth buying back.
Don't know the cat yet, as the assessors have to check it. It's definitely repairable as far as I'm concerned - would need a replacement tailgate and bumper (scrappies? ebay?) . The electric boot even worked when I collected the bike, despite the mangled looking tailgate! (It doesn't now though). I think there's an option to keep it, so maybe yeah, get the repairs done and just not replace it, that'd be good 👍
Been 2 years since similar happened to us. It was a royal pain in the arse being a day before the holiday we'd bought the car for, but it did make me realise the car wasn't what we wanted for post-holiday everyday life. I got a decent payout and bought the car I actually wanted.
Positive story:
Similar experience with my Superb last year; glancing sideways tap on rear wheel arch by an HGV on a roundabout, insurance wanted to write it off at £5k+ of damage. Be ready for a bit of haggling; be firm, state clearly that you do not accept their offer and are keeping ownership of the vehicle until you choose to accept. In my case, I then bought it back, got the suspension fixed by a local garage and took it to a small local body shop to pull out a door skin and arch, bit of paint. I ended up almost £2k in profit on the deal. According to the laser tracking, it's actually straighter now than before the bump; I'd had the tracking checked and reset just a couple of weeks earlier!
When mine got written off on the motorway (2011 I think it was), the insurance paid up no problems - a value that my garage couldn't quite believe was so high! I didn't even bother questioning it, took the money quick before they decided there might be one too many zeroes on the cheque...
So actually it all worked out fine.
I guess see what they offer and how much of a pain it'll be to source a new car or buy back the old one and get it repaired. At least now with options like online car buying, 14-day full moneyback guarantees etc, it's less of a risk than previously.
A friend is still driving around in her Cat N Transporter, years after that was damaged. Was repaired to good as new without issues, just it was deemed too expensive for the insurance to pay for all that.
Insurance letter says "When a car is a total loss, you also have the option to keep your car and we’ll deduct a salvage fee from the settlement amount." not 100% sure what that means.
Need to contact them for courtesy car - just seen the list. Like-for-like courtesy cars - Rolls Royce Ghost, Ferrari 458 Spyder.. hmm, think it'll be a 3 Series for me lol
Need to contact them for courtesy car - just seen the list. Like-for-like courtesy cars - Rolls Royce Ghost, Ferrari 458 Spyder.. hmm, think it'll be a 3 Series for me lol
Be VERY careful with that one. There have been quite a few threads on here (and on places like MoneySaving Expert) where car insurance firms offload the courtesy car bit to a private accident management firm who then bill you for the "hire" at extortionate rates. Check if it really is a free courtesy car or a (paid-for) hire car you're being offered.
Quite a few years ago, a car full of Norwegians went into the side of me with a hire car at a junction.
Car was declared a write off (damage to front wing and bumper (2012 Ford Ka) They gave me the WBAC price to all intents and purposes, but toom the 'salvage fees' off the cheque they gave me. The salvage fee was £500. They said thats how much 'you should get from a salvager'. Basically saves them taking the car away. They said if you didnt get the total salvage fee (£500) off someone, come back and theyd pay the difference.
However i kept the car and fixed it and re-mot'd it. So didnt send for salvage. I also didnt take the hire car offered as didnt need one (had other car) - and didnt need the hassle
Check if it really is a free courtesy car or a (paid-for) hire car you're being offered.
OH yeah, definitely says there will be no cost to me.
Well, actually says "We will provide you with a vehicle of equivalent standard to your own at absolutely no cost to
you whatsoever." 🙂
OH yeah, definitely says there will be no cost to me.
Well, actually says "We will provide you with a vehicle of equivalent standard to your own at absolutely no cost to
you whatsoever." 🙂
Having read up on insurance companies offering hire cars when my car was hit a few years back I wouldn’t believe a word the insurance company say about that. Maybe I’m just incredibly cynical and untrusting of insurance companies though.
Negative story from me I'm afraid.
The companies involved made the process so difficult and time consuming, they were glacially slow, and simply would not budge on the price despite countless adverts sent to them, loads of phone calls etc.
We ended up taking £1-2K less than we needed to buy anything like an equivalent car, just to get the process closed. They even ****ed us over on the price of our child seats. My wife wasn't well at the time, and I was honestly starting to get panic attack symptoms from the stress of it.
I'm also convinced the company purposely made contacting them as difficult as possible (40+ minutes wait before answering phone each time, letters not saved in their system despite recorded delivery, emails ignored, chat function not working etc).
What made the whole thing worse is that we had a hire car at one point during the process and some dumbarse on the phone smashed into the back of that as well and destroyed it!
Maybe I’m just incredibly cynical and untrusting of insurance companies though.
Oh, am I too, hate the bastards. But they are pretty clear on this one! (I have it in writing in 3 different places too, so let em try!)(well, don't, but you know what I mean)
Like-for-like courtesy cars - Rolls Royce Ghost, Ferrari 458 Spyder..
What were you driving???
When my CLS Shooting Brake was hit I was offered an S Class, which I though was pretty good...
What were you driving???
As said "think it'll be a 3 Series for me"
(those others are just on their price list... why I need to know the prices is anyone's guess)
Positive experience from me:
2mths ago, a car pulled out a pub car park into both nearside doors, sill and a bit of rear arch trim. Not too bad as I half saw it coming and managed to swerve a bit to lesson impact. 65 plate X-Trail worth about £6k on Autotrader.
Anyway, I dealt fully with his insurance company directly. They offered £500 in lieu of hire car but I deferred answering this until teh assessor had been out. He didn't give his decision but from chatting I guessed it'd be written off. Straight back inside after he'd gone and requested the £500 hire car payment.
Few days later, confirmation they were writing the car off and valued at £6100. I couldn't find any evidence to argue it was worth more and so asked if I could keep the car. They sent me £5100 and I kept the car (this is in addition to the £500, so £5600 total).
Took the door card off, bashed the door skin out and gave it a quick machine polish to remove most of the scratches. Not perfect but not horrendous and essentially I now have a free car to run into the ground over the next couple of years.
Surprisingly, their insurance was Admiral and it was very easy to deal with.
Quite a few years ago, a car full of Norwegians went into the side of me with a hire car at a junction.
Were they in a fjord?
Have some hideous Mercedes SUV to collect from the rental place this afternoon. Ah well, could be worse I suppose.
Insurance letter says "When a car is a total loss, you also have the option to keep your car and we’ll deduct a salvage fee from the settlement amount." not 100% sure what that means.
That means if say your car was worth £5k and had a repair quote of £8k and they have offered you say £5K settlement, you will have an option to take less (say £4K) keep the car and arrange your own repair to the bits that really need it. If that costs you £2k and gives you a car worth £3k that might be worth considering BUT if your car is in the garage for a month they won’t usually cover the hire car from the moment you settle!
Haggle 3 times, mine didn't even bother to phone me until the 3rd time, just sent back the same pro-forma letter with a number 10% higher. In my case the fee to keep the car was ~15%, and I got significantly more than that for it as scrap (it was a cheap-ish car though). You can then go to the ombudsman if their offer was less than the price of a similar car.
Positive; you now have an e-bike, no car, soon to have a pocket full of cash and it's summer*. See how long you can go car free for.
*well it's going to rain all weekend but, hopefully it'll come back.
Positive; you now have an e-bike, no car, soon to have a pocket full of cash and it's summer*. See how long you can go car free for.
Yeah, there is that. And I ride to work (non-electric!) . I've got 2 ebikes now, a Moterra and a Moterra SL 😀 (the former will be sold (probably))
Neutral experience here.
Rear-ended on the M40, the only damage was to the tailgate, but because it was an older vehicle, it was written off. They were happy to sell it back to me, though. The catch was they wanted an 'engineer's report' to say it was still roadworthy before they'd continue to insure it. They were unhelpful about where to get that report, only saying an MOT wasn't sufficient. In the end, I took the car to my local mechanic, who was surprised at how little damage there was. He said, 'You write the report and I'll sign it', so £10 later, insurance was sorted.
Some time later we moved house and sent off the docs for the address change. The DVLA wrote back and said that since it's been written off and now the address change there was a risk it was an attempt to clone the vehicle and I must take it for an inspection at a DVLA centre that's 3 hours drive away on only opens to the public fo a couple of hours per week. I kept putting off making an appointment until it eventually failed its MOT, so we decided to give up and scrap the car.
I'd probably have replaced the car at that point anyway, so the write-off saved me the hassle of selling, but introduced other issues.
Were they in a fjord?
That's scandilous
Everyone knows how high insrance work is, it is a scam.
Using the same garage, if its insurance its way more than going in for private work and inevitably, you end up with the same end point.
There needs to be a "local repair" check box option on the proposal form... everyone saves money, everyone wins.
And while I'm at it. Accident and 100% no fault? Why oh why does the no-fault driver premium increase? So unfair...
why does the no-fault driver premium increase?
Luckily, it hasn't - well not for a year and 3 days anyway. I've informed my current scammers, and they can't put the price up because I only have 3 days left with them. I informed the new scammers who I join this week, as a "notification only", and they miraculously came back saying there's no change to my premium. I was amazed.
I mean, you also get fined twice for any speeding, as you pay £100 and get 3 points, then insurance renewal gets put up by £100 because you obviously haven't learned your lesson. Yep, scammers.
Last claim against me was for a tiny crack on a bumper on a Mitsubishi jeep thing I reversed into in a car park. The insurer's chosen repair centre made this a £5000 repair bill! It was incredible - I got a break down of the costs off them - they'd replaced a light cluster that wasn't touched, brackets to hold on the bumper that weren't damaged and the bumper.. £5K, the shitty Mitsubishi wasn't worth that! So, yep, scammers.
You guys getting roadworthy cars back for 15% were very lucky. When I hit a deer the Ins Co offered me about 75% of the cost of a like for like replacement and if I wanted to buy it back they wanted 65% of that and it wasn't roadworthy! They dragged their heels for ages , eventually upped their offer by 10% with wording that meant if I accepted I couldn't go to the ombudsman and I was stuck without a car so had no choice but to accept.
This is what wrote the car off;
When ours got written off it was a classic 'worth more as a car than a pile of cash' scenario, we got less than market - think it was £3k vs £3.5k. But we weren't looking to replace like-for-like as it was pretty long in the tooth by then. Sliver lining was that the hire car was massive and convinced Mrs M that she could actually drive a decent sized estate.
MiL's car got written off the other day and she actually got more than expected, she could have actually gone like-for-like without being out of pocket. We were all surprised at that one!
Timely thread. Was in an accident on Sunday (other driver accepted full fault), half expecting my Octavia to get written off, similar damage to that BMW pictured above.
WBAC price is showing £4.5k but buying on autotrader/cazoo are showing same age, variant and mileage to be more like £7.5k. would be pretty peeved if I got less than £6k.
Kind of wish I'd taken it to local garage for an estimate now, the other party's insurers are picking it up in an hour. Hopefully they just fix it.
Checked Autotrader, nothing within 80 miles of home for less than £12K (same as I paid in August) for same spec, mileage and year, so I'll be holding out for that, might take a fight.. still hoping for repair though tbh.
A word of caution for those claiming directly off the third party insurer. You have no real rights against them if things go wrong.
In other words, if the repairs are poor or you're not happy about the value or something (or whatever), you're not their customer. So you can't go to the ombudsman about them, and if you need to take it further you'll end up suing someone in court (probably the third party themselves)
There's nothing wrong per se with going down that route, especially if they're going to plop you in a hire car for the duration, but be careful and enter it with your eyes open. And do make sure you notify your own insurer and day it's notification only.
They don't seem in much of a hurry to get the assessor report done for my car.
One positive -the sound system in the huge great Merc SUV I've got til it's sorted is superb. Most important function in a car for me 😀
the other party's insurers are picking it up in an hour. Hopefully they just fix it.
Hopefully not Activate group. A more shambolic collection of thieves and liars you would not hope to meet.
And they can't match paint to save their miserable lives.
As noted above, you have no say over the quality of repair.
The other party is with Admiral. On the phone they said any repairs would be guaranteed for as long as I own the vehicle, which sounds good even if that probably wouldn't survive first contact with real life.
Academic anyway as they have economically written it off. Haven't been able to bring myself to log into their portal/phone them to find out what they value it at yet as I am fearing the worst, have had a hard day and don't want to lose a night's sleep over it.
Assuming they low ball me I guess I go with a strategy of 1) providing them with listings/sales of similar age spec cars 2) threaten to get my insurer involved and make the claim via my insurance which would cost us both more but they might want to avoid it enough to give me more.
Have you still got the car? Take a closer look, have the boot hinges at the roofline moved, is the boot floor/spare wheel well/boot sill flat? Shut lines for the rear doors even?
There is normally a deformable crash beam behind the bumper, check for damage to the car where it bolts to the chassis. If you have a towbar on the car (even with the ball removed) it's more likely to transfer the impact into the structure as often you remove the deformable crash beam and replace it with the towbar which is steel box section. And measure between front and rear wheel rims on each side to check if the axle is straight.
Claiming as a third party from Admiral update in case someone comes across this in future:
Did the process online - turns out they offered reasonably close (£6600) to what I reckoned autotrader value was (£7-7500). Decided not to bother with the hire car which I'd not had time to collect yet which got me another £300, so all in all reasonably happy with the value given...
...which is good because the online portal is very much: this is your final offer, accept or reject. I'm sure there were ways to contest things still but I don't have the time or mental energy right now. Would probably go via phone if it happens again but I have been exhausted by dealing with all this alongside work and feared I'd be outmanouvered on the phone - I am not a natural haggler.
Now to wade through autotrader and get to grips with which VAG group petrol engines are most reliable.
I had a similar thing off Aviva, the payout value was pretty good all things considered so I just took it. Life’s too short.
You might be looking a while if you’re trying to find which VAG group petrols are reliable, they all have their quirks. I had a 1.4tsi and all sorts went wrong - an injector failed at just 70k miles and cost me over a grand to sort, the turbo wastegate used to stick open frequently and there’s no real fix for it, the alternator died at around 40k miles and don’t get me started on the DSG gearbox…
The spicier 2.0tsi has been known for water pump failures and leaks
The newer 1.5 evo doesn’t sound too troublesome so far, except for the cylinder deactivation which I’ve seen some reports of issues with.
So, they've tried offering £10K for mine. I can't replace it for that, so I said why should I be out of pocket for someone else wrecking my car and said I'll take £12K.
Utterly ridiculous that they can write it off from photos. He said that's what they all do now. They just don't give a toss about the hassle it causes.
I refer you to the previous answer saying you're not their customer, so they have no obligation to give you a good deal or great service etc.
However, you can negotiate. So provide evidence of what you need to spend to get an equivalent. Appreciate you said this isn't your bag, but Admiral will make some juicy profit this year if you don't 😀
Utterly ridiculous that they can write it off from photos. He said that's what they all do now. They just don't give a toss about the hassle it causes.
What would you propose? That it goes to a body shop for them to spend hours examining and costing, knowing full well it will be a write off, and they won't get any work from it? Perhaps you'd like three competitive quotes - nothing to stop you taking it round multiple body shops to get a quote that comes in under £10K (including courtesy cars etc) so that its worth their while repairing it. I think many people would see you sending pics - them saying clearly a write off is actually the least hassle option?
Nicely worded response there poly, cheers. I'll stop there and leave the thread.