I was driving home in my baby from work last week. As usual, the fast lane was the slowest lane during rush hour and our lane was stopped. In the rear view mirror I saw a Jeep Liberty barreling down my lane. He was 1/4 mile at least. He made no effort to cut down his speed until he was less than 100 ft away. I guess he had just noticed that we were stopped. Sensing what was going to happen, I maneuvered my car to the shoulder of the road so that he would have a couple more feet to stop. Apparently he had the same idea. He managed to stop just short of me. Unfortunately he stopped so quickly that the Toyota pickup behind him barely had time to hit the brakes. Toyota pickup crashed into Liberty crashed into Camry. My baby was totaled, the rear end being nothing but a hunk of twisted metal. Needless to say, the Toyota pickup's insurance company is picking up the tab. Here is my question: The insurance company totaled my car. They are offering about $3200+taxes for a fully loaded, 1990 Camry V6 LE with 126,000 miles on it. Since I wasn't planning on selling it, I had no idea of the value, so I looked at the classifieds and found
4 ads for the same vehicle (almost all had more miles on them than mine) and the average came to about $4700. I figure this to be kinda high, with these being dealership prices. I told the insurance company that I thought their offer was low. They replied that their figure was fair and was arrived at by outsourcing a service called Autosource, who had 37 vehicles of the same make and model within a 96 mile radius in their listings database. How can Autosource have 37 1990 Camry LE's when I could only find 4??? I used as many online search engines as I could find. I asked to see the listings that Autosource used so that I could verify the price and the insurance agent indicated that she would send the listings to me. What do you guys think? Should I take the money and run?? Should I hold out? They seem to have a good case for their price, although I haven't seen the data yet. I've never negotiated with an insurance company before. Anyone have any tips?- posted
20 years ago