Insurance assessment

Its your vehicle and its yours to do what you want with it, DONT let them take it away on a trailer, you'll never see it again. Get them to pay out what its worth , show them invoices of money spent to justify what you want them to pay, be prepared to accept less. One you have some money from them get the car fixed yourself. steve the grease

Good advice. Insurance companies forget who the customer is, IME.

Are you claiming against someone else's insurance? If you're making a

3rd party claim as the accident wasn't your fault, you are entitled to have your property *replaced* or restored to the condition it was in before the damage. So if they insist on writing it off, ask them the simple question first: Ok, given the value you say it's worth, YOU find me another one at that price and i'll accept your offer. Otherwise insist on the car being repaired.

I have first hand experiece of this on two seperate occasions with somewhat unique or rare cars, and on the first occasion i got them to up thier offer by 50% as they couldn't find another identical model at the amount they were offering, the second time I obtained a large cheque to repair the vehicle myself, as they were completely unable to locate a replacement.

Alex

Alex

Thanks for that advice. I have parked another car in the way, so they can't get a trailer near the bent one without my cooperation.

But my concern is what they notify to Swansea. Can the insurance company tell Swansea it is written off without my agreement?. And if so, can I do anything about it?

Jim

You seem to have an engineers report, so if it comes to it you can dispute their findings.

Once an insurance co. pays off a total loss, the vehicle is their property. Make it clear that you want first refusal on its disposal.Buy it back off them, then get it repaired and an engineers report once complete.

As far as I know, a write-off is an economic decision on the insurance policy, and nothing whatsoever to do with scrapping the car.

Actually it is. The category of write-off can make a big difference. See

Isn't "re-registered" on that site talking about registration for insurance purposes?

I don't see why a decision not to pay for repairs costing more than the value of the car should have any effect on its DVLA registration.

No, it is actually tagged against the car at DVLA, to try and stop cat A & B cars returning to the road. It can cause problems if you try and sell a Cat C car and it hasn't been inpected. The explanantion is at

Jim,

I had front end ofside damage on the front on my Bedford CA Camper, the assessor looked at it and declared it as uneconomical to repair because of the serious damage to the fibreglass bodywork, I got the vehicle and its full insured value from the insurance company. I then took it to a local classic car repairer who repaired it, an engineers report was done Mot'd and the insurance company then reinsured it and I am still running it today. I had to find £200 to top up the insurance money but thought it worth it.

Mart> You seem to have an engineers report, so if it comes to it you can

I see. That's all since I had any involvement with a write-off, and it had passed me by. I think what we are talking about - economic writing off of a classic - would almost certainly be category D, though.

Well it should be, but the original poster was worried about it being a B. Really should be no more than a C, and it's then worth an inspection on your classic.

The only reason I know about this is because some pillock ran into the side of my late father-in-law's Pug 405 and smashed both doors. The insurers wrote it off as the cost of two doors was more than we paid for the car, but we had two doors in stock from a previous car we had broken, and my neighbour was a paint sprayer so we put the car back on the road for less than £100!

I couldn't get this link to work. I will have another go tomorrow.

Interestingly, this link shows that a VIC can be applied to a Category B as well as a C

That is not how the assessor was looking at it. He regarded Category B as Structural Damage. In modern cars with crumple zones, I can see why this is important. But If I had found a classic in a field with the same structural metal rusted away, I could replace it with new metal and nobody would worry. What is the difference if bent metal is cut away and replaced? I don't suppose whoever decided on the VIC scheme ever considered its relevance to older vehicles.

It looks like I will have to study the VIC policy document in detail.

Jim