Possibly a long story, so let me summarise.
My daughter bought from my MIL her Seat Mii. The MIL had owned it from new, it was a 2014 plate, all the bells and whistles, and it had around 15,000 miles on it when my daughter bought it.
The rub here is that the only reason my MIL sold it was due to a terminal cancer diagnosis, and she was very happy the car was staying in the family. My MIL passed away almost two years ago now and daughter has really enjoyed the car, and despite it being metal and rubber bits, it did hold a great deal of sentimental value.
In February, the car was hit by another driver, while it was parked. The other driver left details so a claim was raised with daughter’s Insurers, and they would recover from the other driver.
Many many times we stressed that we would be keen to keep the car if it could be repaired, even offering to pay any difference between economic write off and repair costs. Alas, no such figures were provided and we were told that the car had been written off.
Pay out was agreed and she has bought a replacement (identical, but less trinkets) car.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and she gets an update that her car has been repaired and it even showing as having MOT from March.
Daughter is gutted. I think it’s pretty poor service given the history. What do we think, are we being too emotional here?
I sort of feel at the very least a expression of dissatisfaction?
Hmm, you should have had the opportunity to buy it. It's probably ended up at an auction and someone has repaired it much cheaper than an approved body shop (rip of merchants) would have done.
My son bought a 64 plate Leon FR off a friend, with a blown engine, for £1500. £500 for a "new" used engine with 35k on it, and consumables, the car is back on the road and he's been offered £4,500 to £5,000 for it (if he sells it). My son replaced the engine in two days on my drive.
Shame you weren't offered to buy it for scrap.
A mate had similar to the OP, wrote off a BMW convertible & later found out it was back on the road and he would love to have had it repaired & kept it. Just one of those things that you can probably do nowt about so don't stew on it I'm afraid.
When cars get written off there are really two outcomes: 1. Its so badly damaged it must be destroyed by the scrappy and should never be back on the road again ; 2. Its not economically viable to repair (at insurance rates) so they pay you the value, they get rid of the damaged car. Each of those has two sub categories but thats irrelevant.
You wanted them to repair and you to pay the difference - that would be very odd (and probably commercially stupid). What is sometimes offered is that you can keep the car and they give you money to compensate for the damage, e.g. reflecting its lower resale value. I think that is only normally offered if the car is in a drivable condition - nobody wants an unsafe car left on the road whilst someone pockets the cash. They will have sold the car (likely via auction) to someone who fixes smashed cars and made it reasonably presentable and road legal again and flogs it on. That's good for society - we aren't crushing repairable cars.
However if she is getting updates about the car - does that mean someone hasn't done the paperwork to declare no longer the keeper?
Daughter is gutted. I think it’s pretty poor service given the history. What do we think, are we being too emotional here?
To be brutally honest, probably. As far as sentimental value goes, a car isn't going to last for ever. My mum passed, christ, nearly two years ago now. My sentimental reminders are a couple of pictures and her favourite mug.
All valid points….we should move on.
The updates thing is peculiar though, as it was from Insurers so it’s almost as if they have approved the repair. It was with their repairer when we last heard, before it was announced as a write off.
However if she is getting updates about the car - does that mean someone hasn't done the paperwork to declare no longer the keeper?
I get a text message each year to remind me that the van I sold in 2019 has an MOT coming up. I quite enjoy learning it's still chugging along.
@poly, just to clarify, we offered to pay the difference, for example if the repair was £4000, but it was only economically viable to repair if it was going to be £3000, we may have given them £1000 towards the repair and we have it back.
Ombudsman has some limited info on their website:
It's not entirely clear about what the outcome might be, but they seem to say it's unfair for the car to be scrapped or sold off without you being told. So, complain to the company. You might get some compensation. If not, take it to FOS.
But otherwise, it's a piece of metal. We all have fond memories of our first cars (even though my Pug 205 was a bag of shit) and maybe it's better to learn to move on about these sort of things?
From the link:
-
If your vehicle has been scrapped without warning
After their vehicle has been written off, consumers sometimes tell us they:
- didn’t know their car would be scrapped after it was written off
- wanted to keep the written off car or the ‘salvage’
- lost possessions that were inside the car
When a vehicle is written off, the insurer usually owns the salvage once the owner has accepted payment for the full market value. But we don’t think it’s fair for your insurer to scrap your vehicle without telling you. So we’ll check whether you agreed to accept a payment, and if you told your insurer you wanted to keep the salvage.
In some cases, the insurer has paid the market value and returned the damaged, but deducted what they’d have got for the salvage – and the owner is unhappy with what’s been deducted.
We’d normally think it’s fair for your insurer to take off the amount they would have made from selling the scrapped vehicle from the amount they pay you. But we’d ask them for evidence to prove how much they would have got for the salvage.
Thanks. What’s irking is we specifically asked to be advised of the repair possibility and the costs. We weren’t, just told it was written off, so we assumed it was unrepairable, Cat C or whatever. That’d it’d be now at a breakers yard. On the strength of that, we took a settlement.
Should I be narked a car was written off, then not?
Feels like we haven't quite got the full picture but...have you checked?
If the car was written off but repairable it is most likely a Cat N if no strucutal damage. I'm assuming the car is still written off and has a CAT N or CAT S marker on it.
Presumably your insurer made you an offer of a payout which you accepted? Why did you accept it if you wanted to keep the car?
I recently went through this but dealt solely with the third parties insurers as they hit me. They offered me £6150 for the car. I said, hey if I want to keep the car how much? They then replied that they'd only payout £5100 if I kept the car. Job done.
Unfortunately, insurers want an easy life. Offering to split repair costs could be a whole world of risk and exposure for them. They got their easy life as soon as you accepted the amount they offered you.
Well it passed it’s MOT in March with no advisories, so we assume it’s back on the road…
We accepted the payout as we had repeatedly asked them to be offered the chance to get it back. This was never offered and we were told it was written off. To clarify, we made the specific request, the written off news implied the specific request could not be met.
How much damage was done?
Our 04 Celica was reversed into on New Years Day by a neighbour - they immediately fessed up & gave us all their insurance details.
Phoned their insurer (the AA) to raise a claim & they wanted to write it off - offering £1500 for the car (similar examples go for aroud £2000-2500) there was minor damage to the bumper. We weren't happy with that, so persued it via our insurer who actually assessed the damage & agreed writing it off would be dumb.
Slight caveat - another neighbour reversed into us 6 months earlier & damaged both the bumper & the wing. Their insurer Direct Line were happy to replace both. I figured a bumper repair would be easy as it was still a new bumper.
There are other scratches & damage on the car. When I dropped it off at the body shop they did ask if we wanted anything else done outside of the insurance. I ended up getting the alloys refurbed. It looked mint when I picked it up.
CAT N and CAT S cars can legally be on the road. The car has still been written off and will be identified as such on any vehicle report.
Sounds like your insurers just don't offer the option to buy back then...or you're unlucky that you didn't ask the right person at the right time.
It's just a car.
If you'd have got a good handler they might have told you the category of write off and potentially offered to sell you the car back. But it looks like they just decided it wasn't economically viable for them to repair so wrote it off. Thing is, many insurance write offs can be put back together by someone who knows how, sources parts second hand and doesn't charge £100/hr for their time.
Fair enough you're annoyed by it, I would be. But I don't think that legally anyone's done anything wrong, morally maybe.
Yeah I think that's where you went wrong. I've never heard of an insurer getting into that sort of messy transaction. Its quite likely that they never got as far as a full quote for the repair work - the assessor takes one look, sees its going to cost more than £3k to fix based on experience then there's no point wasting time working out a formal quote, preparing quotes takes time so costs money, which for an obvious write off is pointless. What you "should" have asked them was what would they give you as settlement and let you keep the car. To use your example figures if they paid your £3000 for a write off, and sold the car to a repairer for £1000 - paying out and keeping the car would have got you at most £2000 - you then have the choice of paying 4k (or more!) for a professional fix, or making your own repairs. If it was a category S write off then they shouldn't let you drive it away from wherever it was being assessed and it needs removed on a truck/trailer to where it is repaired (=more cost).@poly, just to clarify, we offered to pay the difference, for example if the repair was £4000, but it was only economically viable to repair if it was going to be £3000, we may have given them £1000 towards the repair and we have it back.
Real world example.
My wife was side swiped on a roundabout. Pretty minimal damage to our car, pushed in wing and bumper. We sent photos to the assessor and waited. A few days later, the car was in for it's MOT which it passed. The garage we use has looked after us for a few years now. Whilst the car is at the garage we get an email stating that due to the damage, the insurance assessor want to get the front wheel checked for damage followed by another stating that the car has been judged a total loss, click here to fill in a form.
I rang the assessors a couple of days later and chatted through the circumstances. Turned out that the repairs quoted amounted to £3,100 on an '09 Hyundai, hence the total loss! I asked about options and was told I could buy it back etc.. I then asked if I could just keep the car with it's war wounds and get them sorted at my own expense (I know a guy who has a body shop). The call agent was quite surprised, almost as if no one had ever asked this, but yes that wouldn't be a problem.
In answer to your question, yes you should. Insurance companies will always look for the easiest option for them.
Surely it was only an insurance right off, they then sell the vehicle to someone else who will sell it as spares or repair (like what a lot of YouTubers do). So from the insurance point of view it was written off but they then own the vehicle to do with it what they will. They obviously want to recover as much as possible so sell it on even if they only get scrap value.
