MooseMiller
Member
This is all good accurate information. I'd just like to add that - certainly in my experience - there is less of a grey area to valuation than you may first think. When an insurance company makes a settlement offer, a significant proportion of claimants state that their vehicle is worth more than the offer. This is either because they really do feel that their car is worth more, or they are just trying to wring more money out of their insurers. Whatever... because of this, insurers will carry out a thorough and very accurate appraisal to provide a valuation and if you feel this is low, there is no negotiation as if you were buying / selling a car but you are essentially asked to prove it. 99% of the time, people cannot as a fair amount of time went into the original evaluation. If you took it to court you would also be asked to prove your valuationYou can of course, maintain that your car is worth more than what they offered you, or that your far is worth more than other similar cars on the market, but this is down to negotiations. There's always a grey area when it comes to valuing second-hand cars, and additionally there's some give-and-take because in most cases the insurer will prefer to settle the claim rather than go to court over it.