UKC

I'll start with a Haiku.

In Jan I had a
prang with a DHL van
Finally progress

So after much emailing, calling and sending of evidence DHL admitted full liability and passed me onto a repair centre. The assessor came out this morning to take some photos of the damage and they'll be in touch with a plan to fix it.

The crazy thing is that i was happy to just fix the indicator and not bother with the rest as it's a very old knackered van but they insisted on going this route.

I'm pretty confident that the repair bill (new wing, bumper, lamp plus labour and a courtesy van) will make this a write off.

The van is insured for £1500.00 which is more then it's worth. So what can I expect if this is the case? They pay me an agreed sum for the van let's say £1000 for example. I then buy the van back for a much lower figure, what might that be? I can then fix the van myself for the cost of the indicator (£50 plus VAT).

What's the situation with insuring the vehicle once it's a category something write off? Or perhaps I'll sell it and get a new van, is that straight forward? Do I change the V5 document?

Thanks

In reply to George Fisher:

quite simply.... yes

The costs and amounts will depend on your particular vehicle and you are right in thinking your nominal £1500 value it's insured for is irrelevant and you will get the market rate

It would most likely be Category D write off which is the easiest to get back on the road.

Just talk it through with the insurer and they'll explain it

V5 doc stays with the vehicle (i.e. if you get rid then it goes to new owner)

In reply to balmybaldwin:

>.Just talk it through with the insurer and they'll explain it

I like your optimism, It's taken 3 months to get them to admit fault in the clearest cut case you could imagine. I doubt their ability to communicate anything.

In reply to George Fisher:
They will make you an insulting offer.
Then you look in auto trader for a reasonable replacement (not the cheapest one covered in debts and smelling of dog and fags, a proper equivalent) and send them a couple of examples.
You've looked after your vehicle and maintained it well. You want an equivalent you can rely on.
Then you argue a few times and eventually they give in.
If they give you a hire car as replacement you are in a stronger negotiating position as it costs them every day.
You can buy your van back after write off if you think it's repairable.

Yeah, tell your (new) insurers - it will probably be a Cat D.
Also need to tell new owners if you sell it on later.

In reply to SiGregory:

A look on auto trader shows that the cheapest available regardless of mileage, condition or location is £1500. The next after that is £1750.

So it would cost that for a replacement at the very least. Having a relatively rare van has its up sides.

I'm told I'm getting a hire van so it could work out okay.

In reply to George Fisher:

The insurance companies tend to work on 'trade' price which is about half of the retail. Expect first offer of £500 and then argue up to approx. £1000. That seems to be how it works. If you have legal cover on your insurance threated to sue for price difference, inconvenience, price of hire car etc etc etc. Sometimes works.
Good luck and be hard!

In reply to johncook:

Not arguing but how can they justify using trade price to figure out the replacement value? If you need to buy a replacement van, the price that's relevant is the retail price less any reasonable discount.... i.e. if you find 5 vans averaging £2,000 or so you might get £1,800ish as forecourt price less a bit of haggling expectation?

In reply to Ferret:
I wasn't offered trade, and if they came up with a stupid offer I would - and did - challenge them to find me a viable equivalent vehicle within a reasonable distance.

Disclaimer : I wouldn't put anything past them, but if it's a non fault claim they may be more reasonable.

In reply to George Fisher:
I once had a VW Scirrocco which I paid £1000 for. Did around 40k miles in it then another car ran into the back of me and caused some fairly minor damage but it was enough to write the vehicle off. The day after the accident, a company called Helphire, because it was not my fault, gave me a new Peugeot 406 as a hire car. I thought I'd have it a month or so while it was sorted. I ended up keeping it for 7 months while the claim was sorted. I didn't pay a penny - directly - towards the hire but did see the invoice which was for just over £6k. The offer for my VW was £800 and I got to keep the car, which I sold for £400. Although I did OK out of it, I was pretty furious as it is clear insurance companies do so little to mitigate their losses and we, the customers, have to fork out for unreasonably high premiums.

In reply to SiGregory:


It seems not all insurance companies act like this. I paid £1850 for a fiesta 18months ago that was written off in an accident 3 months later. After hearing tales of how i could expect a derisory offer i was surprised to be offered £2300, even after the £350 excess i was quids in. Last week i heard that the other party have finally backed down and admitted liability, so I'm getting my excess back as well.

I'm very happy with Tesco's insurance.

In reply to mountain.martin:

The only offer I've had from an insurance company was exactly fair. They were very straight. They said the cost of repairing is exactly the cost of write-off (which was exactly what I would have asked for). It's your choice, repair or money. I chose repair, but that's irrelevant.

In reply to SiGregory:


Sounds like you have experience of this. May I ask at what price point you have experienced this? The £1000-1500 level is probably complicated w.r.t. this aspect.

I have second-hand experience.
I bought a Kia Cee'd for £3500 privately in late 2014. 15 months and 16k miles later I sold it to a friend for £2700 (was going to put it on advert at £3k and accept £2.8k). It got written off four days later by a truck reversing into it and knacking some body panels, only cosmetic damage.
Insurance wrote it off and gave my mate £4300. £800 more than I'd paid for the car before adding 16k miles to it. |
He then bought it back as (I think) Cat D write-off or whatever the lowest level is. £900 buy-back. Had to spend about £100 sorting a wing mirror. Some other faffing around required but in the end he effectively got a free car.

That £4300 was absolutely not market value, not even at trader price (09 plate, 65k on the clock). Probably £3.6k at dealer, £3.0k - £3.1k for optimistic private seller

In reply to George Fisher:
I'd wait to see what the Loss Adjuster offers you. You might get a nice surprise.

5 years go I was hit head on by a car that had lost control and crossed the road right into my path. I had a Golf GTi. The other driver's insurers admitted full liability and my car was a write off.

Glasses Guide and various other companies indicated that the value of the car was between £4000 and £4500.

Th Loss Adjuster assessed it at £5000. Needless to say I accepted

In reply to George Fisher:

Thanks for the response.

When people talk about 'buying the vehicle back' is that a straight forward process? Does the vehicle actually change ownership or does one just deduct the buyback price from the write-off payout.

I.e. If the insurance pays out £1000 and the buy back is £100 the insurance co just give you £900 in one transaction.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Mine was an 18mth old hot hatch. They offered me £3k below the cheapest on A/T.

In reply to George Fisher:

In my case they'd already sent a cheque and were arranging for collection when I told them that no, I wanted to retain and repair the car myself. Ownership never changed. We simply argued for a bit over scrap value and I cashed their cheque and transferred to the insurance co the agreed scrap value. After repair my insurers agreed to continue insuring my (Cat D) write off, but only for its scrap value, which I thought was fair.

In reply to SiGregory:

Thanks. Just goes to show, there is no general rule OR if there is, it varies with general value (possibly with "car type" too)

In reply to johncook:


Exactly what happened to my daughter after her car was written off with all her business equipment inside and she sustained some injury herself, and had to also claim for loss of earnings, luckily she had legal cover, they eventually made her a insulting offer on all counts , and she was advised by her legal advisor to reject that ( and possibly the next offer too)

Sounds like if you want a reasonable outcome ( with no legal backup) , you have to be prepared to be in there for the long haul, and put in a lot of your own time ( which you should then try and get back from them too)

In reply to Trangia:


Very possible that, that loss adjuster is now looking for another job that they are better suited for

In reply to Jim C:


Well of all replies to this thread, 2 have had direct experience of very low offers and a battle to get it improved, but 5 have had direct experience of decent or surprisingly good offers.

Before my experience i had just heard the horror stories so was pleasantly surprised by my result and how smoothly it went.

But I'm sure if i had one of the bad experiences my focus would be rather different.

In reply to George Fisher:

So they came back with an offer today.

£950.00 total loss
£850.00 and I can keep the van.

I'm actually quite surprised at their apparent fairness. I don't want to take the piss but should I negotiate at this point?

The cheapest van of similar type in auto trader is £1500. £1795 if the distance is kept down to a sensible day out.

Should I just point that out and see what they come back with?

In reply to George Fisher:

Would £850 cover the costs of repairing your van?

In reply to Timmd:

More than but £950 will not buy a replacement vehicle.

In reply to George Fisher:

Perhaps give them the cost of a replacement van and see what they say?