Insurance settlement

[roj]

As some of you may remember I had a bit of an accident a little while ago and my c230K came off a bit worse for wear. Well after much waiting , holding on the 'phone and waiting some more I finally received a settlement figure from my insurance company(the car was written off).

Now the car was a pristine late '95 C230K Sport,61000miles, fmbsh, electric full leather, and all the usual sport options. I have seen similar cars for sale ranging from £5500 up to around £7500.

So you may be as shocked as I was to find a cheque for £2608 in the envelope! After getting an evaluation from Glass's guide I found the car to be worth just over £4000 trade-in, £7000 retail.

Does anyone Know if this is usual practise? I was going to reject the offer, but a friend reckoned they might just tell me to p*** off altogether! Anyone any experience with this sort of thing as I have never made a claim before this!

The company was Admiral by the way and my excess and remaining premium had been deducted (approx £500). Any help would be much obliged.

Tahnx

 

[grasmere]

Put it this way roj, a £ more to you is a £ less to them - and thats where they come from.

Reject it immediately, do not cash the cheque though. You may have to return it. I'm not sure of this but you could cash it and send a letter of rejection of the settlement amount acknowledging receipt of the 'initial amount' less excess and premium. You now look forward to receiving the balance

BTW they cannot tell you to 'p*** off altogether! ' - dont be afraid of facing right up to them

Whilst they may not be aware of all that you say re valuation the fact is they dont want to give you a penny more than they need to.

About 4 years ago a Direct Line inspecting engineer wanted me to accept £3500 write-off for my wifes car, value circa £6000. I mentioned this to the claims handler at DL and she couldnt understand why the engineer was contacting me anyway and took it further for me. I accused him openly (in writing) of being after a backhander from the repair garage unless he could prove different - needless to say I got the repaired for just over £1000

Anyway - what YOU need to do is reject the 'offer' (because that is all it is at the moment, an offer ) and get right back with hard evidence of what a replacement similar vehicle will actually cost you to get on the road. Local ads, autotrader, garage prices etc etc. Dont take it lying down its down to opinions I'm afraid. You need to give facts to back up your opinion and need to ask them for facts to back up theirs . . . good luck

 

[Will]

A tad on the low side I would have thought, and as you know.

So they have basically paid you £3100 (with your excess and remaining premium added).

Probably about what the car trades at.

Ignore the prices in the books, you try going to a car salesman and asking him to give you that.

As a rule of thumb, most traders always take a grand off anything less than about £10K.

If your car was a genuine, low mileage, immaculate example then you are unlucky. Had it have done twice the miles, and been tatty you wouldn't have got that much less! What makes it seem so unfair is that you obviously cannot replace like-for-like for that kind of money yourself.

If you are confident on the condition of your car, and feel that it is worth more, persue it. Notoriously difficult as most insurance companies are known to be stubborn, but worth a try!

Good Luck,

Will

BTW, what exactly happened to your car? What damage caused them to write it off?

 

[pepper&boulou]

That's a disgrace, fight them for ever penny,and if they say thats a fair price tell them to find you a similar car for £2600. Barstewards.

 

[Will]

Oh, and BTW was it auto or manual. A lot of people value Mercs very hard if they are not auto - maybe £500-£1000 less

Cheers,

Will

 

[RichardM]

This does seem quite common, they always send a low offer. I've heard of lots of people who have got an improved offer by sending in hard evidence of the replacement cost. It still might not be the amount you like though.

 

[C240Sport97]

1st rule of negotiation, never start with your best offer .. always with your lowest. So, as said above, collect evidence of market value and send it in. Even better if you have pics showing the good condition of your car. You can only try, and you won't know without trying

 

[l5foye]

roj
I suggest you do not too alarmed at the initial offer. Prepare your case well. Use all adverts ( for broadly similiar car - model, miles etc) . As your car had fmbsh, ask the garage to give a quote on value. Was accident your fault ? If not, I understand you can seek recovery of difference between insurance payout and true value.

 

[andy_k]

when we had our car repaired we spoke to the assessor and let him know just how much we wanted to keep the car ( we didn't but we didn't want it written off for cosmetic damage).

We produced service history, receipts for everything that had been spent on the car, photos showing it's condition before it was damaged and all the other documentation that went with the car.

He was great and listened to what we said and finally put in a valuation of the car which was higher than we had expected .

By all means reject the offer and as others have said back it up with ads etc to show what it would cost to replace your car. It's at times like these you find out how good your insurance company and more importantly your broker are.

Good luck

Andy

 

[roj]

Thank you all for the advice. As you can probably tell I am a little naive with this sort of action.

Probably about what the car trades at.

Will is this how they decide what the car is worth? This would almost tie up with the Glass's guide figure (http://www.glass.co.uk/uk/en/ , £2.95 for a good accurate quote including options etc.) although is still a little short. BTW It was a manual, this was considered on valuation.

What damage caused them to write it off?

The roof had a slight kink in it which was the main reason for it being declared a total loss (sidewards impact into kerb, not much cosmetic damage, alloys, suspension etc.)

I am now going to write a letter rejecting the offer and will back this up with the Glass's valuation as well as ads from 'Trader , 'Mart etc.

Thanks again for everyone's advice I'll let you know how I get on.

 

[KLP 92]

When my E class was written off they offered me £6000. I sent them in numerous ads out of the traders showing prices of similar cars. Afters a few weeks of rejecting their offers we agreed on £8500 so don't give in!! I would get similar ads and post them in to them because trade value is useless to you as you won't be able to buy any half decent C class for that money let alone a 60k 230 Kompressor! They are having a laugh!

 

[roj]

I forgot to mention before, the car was insured for £7000 on the policy application but this is not shown anywhere on the policy itself. Would this have any bearing on the settlement?

Roj

 

[andy_k]

I forgot to mention before, the car was insured for £7000 on the policy application but this is not shown anywhere on the policy itself. Would this have any bearing on the settlement?

Roj

not unless you have an agreed value policy.

 

[Benzowner]

Roj,

Two things, first, the value of your vehicle on the insurance document was probably the value of the car you gave them, but in the small print, it will state you will only receive market value. Second, we had a van stolen from work recently and received a valuation, which was sent to our lease company for approx £4k. The van was valued in the commercial guide at £7k. Now, the cheque was cashed by the lease company, who then came after us for the difference I contacted the insurance company who informed me...... that the £4k value was the value, above which they would consider write off. In other words, if the vehicle was damaged in an accident, that was the value at which if the repairs cost more, they would write the vehicle off. I wrote to them with adverts from Autotrader and other vehicle sales mags showing more realistic values nearer the £7k and in fairness they coughed up. So, I would suggest you write to them, having fist obtained a name over the phone to address your correspondance, so that your letter "don't get lost" sending adverts, excerpts from Glasses Guide etc, etc, and to support your claim, if you have them, copies of your service record.

Good luck

 

[tim.100]

I have dealt with Admiral too - after an HGV wrote off my car, I sent them a concise letter, service history, and 3 pages of Land Rover ads from the specialist magazines. I went for a realistic £5k. They offered £4.8k but upped it on the phone.

Also in the aftermath of the crash: HGV driver got additional driver training because it was "too expensive" to prosecute. He is still driving a 20 tonne DAF; and my neck still hurts.

 

[Shude]

When my '98 c230k (with 140k miles!) was totalled in Feb 2003 a relative of mine assessed the car's value for me (he is an independent insurance assessor). He told me that my insurance company would offer about 7500 but that I was to hold out for £8500 if I could. He said to make sure they saw that it was well maintained and cared for with a full service history and lots of sad photographs of the car in it's pre-accident condition. The Direct Line insurance assessor rang me to say that he'd checked the car, that he thought it was probably in perfect pre-accident condition and that would be able to offer the absolute maximum that the guide said, which was £8333. I'd not even bothered to send them any details yet so I was amazed! I accepted the money and I got a cheque only two weeks after the date of the accident.

I suppose I could have argued with them over the value, but I needed to buy another car fast, running a hire car was expensive.

 

[roj]

Wow tim.mcd, that's pretty shocking they didn't prosecute, I thought they were in the habit of crucifying any drivers as much as possible. Must just be CAR driver's , wouldn't want to upset anyone now would we Mr Blair?!

I've managed to get a few ads together, a '96 N with 90000miles-£6995, 97 P with 64000-£8495 and other's in a similar range.

I think £6500 would be a fair asking price given the year ('95) and manual 'box. I've Emailed Admiral but not received a reply yet.

I would suggest you write to them, having fist obtained a name over the phone to address your correspondance, so that your letter "don't get lost"

Will do this ASAP, thanx Geoff2.

 

[Big Ed]

Wow tim.mcd, that's pretty shocking they didn't prosecute, I thought they were in the habit of crucifying any drivers as much as possible. Must just be CAR driver's , wouldn't want to upset anyone now would we Mr Blair?!

I've managed to get a few ads together, a '96 N with 90000miles-£6995, 97 P with 64000-£8495 and other's in a similar range.

I think £6500 would be a fair asking price given the year ('95) and manual 'box. I've Emailed Admiral but not received a reply yet.
Will do this ASAP, thanx Geoff2.

Roj,

not trying to be harsh, but IMHO I think you might be setting your sights a bit too high - whilst no doubt there are cars being advertised at the prices you state, I personally doubt they will get anywhere near those prices for them, and don't think the sellers are being realistic. I've had a quick look on Autotrader and on the first page I've looked at have found a 98 C230k Esprit (ok, not a Sport, but an auto and a couple of years newer) with fMBsh + 59000 miles for £5350, plus plenty of others similar (95/96 Sports or Elegances, manual or auto, with approx 60k miles) at around that kind of price. I even saw a 99 C280 Sport with fsh + ~60k miles up for £4995 last week! Might have ended up being a dog, but I'd imagine your insurance will throw these examples right back at you and just delay the matter....

I think sending off examples that are not exactly representative of the market price will not help your case. I do entirely agree that the offer you've had seems low, but my suggestion would be to expect somewhere closer to £5000 - £5500 including your excess, although obviously go for what you feel is sensible.

 

[grasmere]

Roj, I agree fully with big ed, whats more 'similar' cars wont help if they are auto and younger ! It needs to be cars like yours. ie manual, same year, service history, etc. and dont set your expectant sights too high but do set your first price higher so thay can come down to what you'd accept - stick with it, if you dont get any joy keep asking them what evidence do they need to see . . .

 

[roj]

originall posted by BIG ED
have found a 98 C230k Esprit (ok, not a Sport, but an auto and a couple of years newer) with fMBsh + 59000 miles for £5350

Wow, that's a good price for that car. A quick look on parker's (I know it's not the best but OK for rough quotes) shows its a bit of a wee bargain!
merc @ parker's

I understand wholely what you are saying, but it would be stupid of me to ask for a low price! I know the insurance aren't going to give me what I want, so I may as well get the HIGHEST price they are willing to pay. If I ask for £5000, they might only give £4000, ask for a bit more and they might offer a bit more, wouldn't you agree?

I thank you for your input though. All thoughts/comments are more than welcome! If you think I am being too ambitious please say! Likewise if you agree with my methods.

Thanx, Roj