Does having a Cat D insurance vehicle cause you loads of trouble when trying to insure? I know Cat C causes trouble thought Cat D were ok.

Any of you insurance experts give me some advice.

I rang up to ask aviva last week, they said it would cause a slight – ie 40 quid – rise on my price.

Cheers nobeer

Anyone else got any experience of this?

Yeah we used to run a Cat D, caused no problems whatsoever. The car is insured to market value regardless of what value you give, so any payout (if somehow written off) would be adjusted accordinly anyway

After mine was Cat D written off and I bought it back, the only thing they wanted to continue cover at the same price was an MoT. Although they did imply, quite reasonably, that the value they would pay out in future was limited to what I’d bought it back for.

Greybeard
Can you explain how that works? It is this?
Insurance company decides car is a economic write off
Give you settlement money (they now own the car)
You buy back the car for the same amount they gave you.
Car is now a CAT D.
You pay to fix it.

Why wouldn’t you just not proceed with the claim (when it becomes apparent it will be written off) and pay to get it fixed?

more like:

Insurance company decides car is a economic write off
Give you settlement money (they now own the car)
You buy back the car for a pitance
Car is now a CAT D.
You pay to fix it.

Legend has it. We paid about 15% IIRC of the settlement value to buy ours back.

Of course there’s no obligation to fix it once you’ve bought it back – as long as it’s roadworthy. We ran ours for 3 years without making any repairs. No MOT or insurance issues.

If we’d had a puncture it would have been more of a problem, as the boot floor was bent making it impossible to remove the spare wheel…

Is Cat D recorded on insurance databases? I want to buy a Berlingo van that the guy says was a Cat D, needed new wing bonnet and lights.

Greybeard
Can you explain how that works? It is this?
Insurance company decides car is a economic write off
Give you settlement money (they now own the car)
You buy back the car for the same amount they gave you.
Car is now a CAT D.
You pay to fix it.

Sorry for the delay. The difference is that you buy it back for less. In my case, they valued it, undamaged, at £1300, and said it would cost £1280 to fix, so they weren’t going to bother and they would write it off. So they would give me £1300 less my £250 excess. I asked if I could buy it back and they said, “no problem, you can buy it for 23% of our valuation – which means you get the car back and a cheque for £750”. It cost me £40 to make it roadworthy, and another £40 for the MoT. No-brainer! I ran it for another 15 months and then sold it (declared as Cat D) for £490.

shouldnt make any difference to the insurance price.

Only makes a difference on any subsequent pay-outs if you write it off again as the book value is lower than a none cat D, even if it’s fully repaired, due to the stigma of it being a cat D. I only have experience with cat C’s but they will be on their system and it should be on the log book if it has changed hands since being a write off.

Only problem with Cat C is you probably need a VIC test the first time it changes hands after being written off (might also be first time being re-taxed or mot’d not sure but all I had to do with ours was a VIC test to remove the marker)

Vic checks are no more, they were uneconomic, and caught only a handful of fraudsters during the time the scheme was ran

I unwittingly bought a cat d car, i had no problem insuring it. Only found out it was cat d when selling and buyer HPI’d it. It turns out the previous owner had a VIC to say it had been repaired properly and this helped me to sell the car.

We have a Cat D car and have insured it with Admiral, who just wanted an MOT despite it being less than 3 years old, and Chris Knott insurance. No extra cost, but the payout will be lower.

“Is Cat D recorded on insurance databases? I want to buy a Berlingo van that the guy says was a Cat D, needed new wing bonnet and lights.”

there are hundreds if not thousands out there….. id just buy another one.

Remember if your asking these questions so is the next person when your selling.

A fairly minor point but a vic check does nothing to look at the quality or safety of any repair work done. All it was there to do was show that the vehicle identity was that of the one shown and not a stolen under a different name etc.

we did it twice with the same car.

first time value around £2k, financial write off: cost to fix. £10 tracking.
second time, value £600, financial write off. Didn’t fix the Largish dent.
Third time, actual write off. They didn’t pay out due to dent not being fixed.

ours is cat D, no work needed to keep it roadworthy just a scuffed slightly dented bumper and some panels shunted a little. insurance paid out the estimated value of car less what they would get for scrapping it (couple of hundred) MOT not an issue, car is still fine, no loose bodywork or any electric/mechanical issues (haven’t even had to change a bulb). Insurance did go up at renewal* but I reckon most of the cost is down to the shyster who caused the accident getting blame shifted to us.
No idea what happens if we try to claim for it after another accident, especially as the “damage” hasn’t been fixed.

*well the renewal from our insurance company (who rolled over when shyster involved some ambulance chasers) absolutely rocketed but slightly higher than previous quote were available from plenty of other insurers.

Vic wasnt proof of safe repair twisty, it didnt even need to roadworthy to be vic’d if transported to the station.
Vic was just proving the vehicles legitimate id to prevent ringing and cut & shuts. As i wrote up there, for the handful of wrong uns who were caught, the test wasnt cost effective and was stopped last October