Day 5 In the Insurance cover House...

Assessor came yesterday morning... His initial comments were it's an easy fix and that he thought I'd overestimated the level of damage on the phone. I asked him if he'd noted the sills and the running board being 4 inches lower at the front than it should be. He then felt the underside and said "Oh... right.... that tips the balance a little.. I'll have to go and price all this up.. I think itmay be a write off."

Now I don't know if I should have just kept shtum and let them get on with it and fix it "easily". Nothing heard yet.

It's one week today since the collision, I've made over 50 phonecalls to progress this and been let down on four different days.

The thought of fixing the Rangie myself has me very depressed, the thought of shopping for another motor has me equally depressed and the though of the loss of £1600 in cosmetic non essential stuff spent on the rangie alone since purchase has taken the shine off purchasing someone elses tat if you see what I mean.

And to top it all some git posted a machine mart catalogue through the door.

to be continued......

On or around Wed, 08 Sep 2004 11:36:05 GMT, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:

some fecking assessor. which insurance company, so we can all avoid 'em like the plague?

they'd only have decided later to write 'er off, I betcha.

mind, if you buy another rangie, I assume at least some of the cosmetic stuff can be transferred if necessary?

there y'go, then, buy a welder and get busy :-)

seriously, though, is the chassis straight? If so, bodywork is not a major issue for a competent body shop, they'll just cut out the damaged bits and replace. IME you need to push for having it repaired by a local shop which you're on good terms with - you then get to discuss it and to supply S/H panels etc. which makes a lot of difference to the insurance verdict. When I had the Citroen crunched a few years back, the recovery lot employed by the insurer took it off to their garage, quoted about 3500 quid to repair it including all manner of stuff that I suspected highly. I told 'em to send me a copy of the written quote, then had it hauled back to the local garage, whom I trust, and we looked at it. Unnecessary work they'd quoted for included:

remove dash panel replace alternator remove/replace engine

and some others I forget - bearing in mind that the doors still shut in line the cage of the car was sound, so there was no need to remove the dash, the alternator was in perfect order, and the engine didn't need to come out to repair the panel damage. The guy at the local garage, on reading their quote, thought they were taking the piss and hoping to get the vehicle cheap for salvage.

I bought another car with a blown engine to get the panels off it to repair mine, for 50 quid, and in the end the claim went through at just over 2 grand, which they OKed and repaired it. If I'd just accepted the original verdict (which included putting new panels on an 7-year-old car - good S/H were more than adequate to restore it to the condition it started in) I'd have lost it, and got paid out not enough to buy another.

Yeah.. a real PITA this.

1 Alloy and 1 running board was mangled in the collision :-(

Welders I have... its the plasma cutter and monster compressor pages I have to try and ignore.

:0)

Tooling to do the job isn't an issue.. Its the queue to get in the garage.. currently blocked by a rather large landrover requiring paint that won't fit through the doors.

Lee D

New levels in incompetence reached.

Yesterday I called to fing out the progress, Kay wasn't in she was out to lunch so James left her an Email to recontact me...4pm nothing.. recontacted "Hello is Kay there" , "No I'm sorry she has left for the afternoon".. GREAT!.. reiterate sad tale to James who states, "I'll ring the engineers now Mr Davies and get right back to you"..... Yeah right...

1030 hours today , a further call to James along the lines of whats happening. I was told the Assesor on Tuesday should tell me the settlement value there and then and if not in anycase within 24 hours. SO here was the reply I got on my voice mail at 1114 after considering my question.

"Hello Mr Davies, the insurance assessors engineer should be around in a couple of days to take a look at your car and they should let you know the situation from there."

erm.... that will be the bloke who came on Tuesday morning at 7am then would it?

And they had the CHEEK to tell me I had a RESPONISIBILITY to keep costs down when I initially questioned a hire car. It's as Well I did. With the fuel I'd have run of running Percy or the 101 I'd have eaten up any settlement by the time they sort it.

I'm going off now to invent a few new swear words.

I'm confident the saga will continue.. the Hire car is on 4400 miles and is due a service at 13000 miles.. wonder what I'll get while it's in.

Lee D

Well we agreed a settlement figure. Just waiting for the pennies now. Pulling apart has begun :-(

Lee D