About 18 months ago, we were given free of charge an 05 plate Honda Jazz automatic. It previously belonged to my wife’s gran, who’d become to infirm to drive, and the car needed a home. It’s been a great little car, surprisingly good at transporting bikes too.

Sadly, a couple of weeks ago, someone ran into the back of it, which resulted in us smashing into the car in front. Insurance details all swapped, sore neck for me and my eldest. After a bit of ratching the bodywork back into shape, I was able to drive it home. Hole in the rear bumper, damage to the boot, front end looking sorry for itself.

I’d insured the car for a value of £900, which I’d deduced was its value by looking at secondhand costs for the same model, and factoring in that it wasn’t in the best shape, having been driven around narrow country lanes by an octogenarian for most of its life. We never planned to sell it, purely because we didn’t envisage anyone would want to buy it.

It’s been picked up by the garage who were appointed by the insurers, and taken away for assessment. They’ve declared it a total loss, which has made me quite sad as I liked the car.

Anyway, I spoke to the insurers tonight, and they’ve advised that it was valued by the garage at nearly £3000. Now, my assumption was that, as we’d insured it at a value of £900, that’s all we could expect to receive back. However, the lady to whom I was speaking advised that if I agreed with the valuation, we could expect to get the full nearly £3k paid out.

Well, Ted, I’m very cynical, as you know. Insurance companies are not known for their benevolence. It doesn’t make sense to me that we could insure the car for a relatively low amount and get a significant larger amount paid out on the claim. I’d have thought £900 would be the most we could expect. After all, why would you insure your vehicle for its true value if you could go lower, pay less premiums, and still get an accurate value paid out?

Clearly, if they’re willing to pay out close to £3k then I’m not going to refuse it. That would help us buy a replacement car far better than I was expecting we’d be able to afford.

There’s got to be a catch though, right? Have I been misinformed about the payout, or is that likely to be true, but if I accept it, what are the likely consequences? There’s always a catch.

If you had stated £5000 you wouldn’t expect that either. I thought it was market value you got. When taking a policy out a rough guess is all that is required surely.

Take the cash. You gave the £900 estimate in good faith. Can’t see a catch.

The value you enter when setting up a policy generally means nothing. In fact you could even enter ‘0’ and they’ll still pay out ( their version of) market value

They pay market value at the time of accident, the figure you guess when buying the policy is pretty much irrelevant.

Having said that, £3k seems a bit high for a “not that tidy” 12 year old Jazz with an Auto box.

Snap their hand off quick! 😉

I paid £1150 for a clio for my son which was bargaintastic (woman sold it too cheap which we didn’t realise how cheap at time) roll on 6 months he put it in a field and totalled it he got £1850 for it and insurance co were fully aware of what we paid for it as at time i thought they would only give what paid minus use. Take the money and run they will shaft you later in life.

Yeh it sounds OK, for a total loss then they have to put you back in your original position, so if it’s a ten year old car with a market value of 1k, (pre accident) then it’s 1k.

If they offer you more, then happy days.

Look on auto trader or wherever to get an idea of what it’s worth.

Take the money and run, lol!

In this corner of the world (aka God’s Waiting Room) a dealer told me last year that he literally couldn’t buy sufficient Jazz’s to sell on. There is so much demand from the wrinklies, and many want the auto.

So 3k for a Jazz? Plausible. Take it and run (or be cheeky, play on autotrader for a bit, get the insurance co to move a bit higher, then run).

You’re not claiming on your insurance though. From what I’ve seen the not at fault owner always gets paid out a reasonably good price.

You could get a new bike for that.

AND a car!

The reason I think they are not too bothered about the declared value of the car is that the cost of claims is dominated by the potential 3rd party injury costs. They ask the same questions to everybody, and they want to make sure you don’t have a collectors item worth 10 times what they expect.

On another topic, if you like the car and it’s driveable, is it fixable if you don’t mind it looking scruffy? They will probably sell it back to you for a fraction of the 3k and you can repair it at your own cost, MoT it and keep the rest. You need to know what category of write off it is; for Cat D that’s probably viable, possibly for Cat C.

Insurance details all swapped, sore neck for me and my eldest.

Are you also claiming for injuries? Not a suggestion; just curious.

Generally personal lines insurers aren;t bothered about the value until it gets over £40k, then they start making stipulations about security.

It’s worth what it’s worth, you didn’t get a discount for saying it was worth £900 so they’ll pay you out what it’s actually worth to put you back in the same position you were in before the crash

Unless it’s an agreed value policy (often used in classic car insurance) then the value you give only has a nominal impact on premium.

If you had said it was worth £5k and they valued it at £900 that’s all you would have got.

theyll get their money back when you reinsure as youve made a claim, grab the cash and run, and ask how much to buy car back off them , i paid 50 quid for a write off cortina that went on for many thousands of miles after a numptie hit it and smashed the back end in

If it was you that caused the accident then I’m sure they’d have either just paid out the £900 or said it was under-insured but this isn’t a claim against your insurance policy so the pay out is based on the market rate (or at least what someone thinks it is) rather than what you insured it for. Not sure why it’s so high but I would just take the money, it’s them that’s valued a replacement at that.

Maybe they’re worried you are coming after them with ‘injuries’ and offering you more than the car is worth to settle right now for them is cheaper?

They’ll be seeking the costs from the third party insurers too so they must be confident of getting the costs.

Thanks for the replies all.

As pointed out above, and as I realised, it’s not my insurer who is paying out, hence getting the value of the car back rather than what I told them I thought it was worth. I’ve accepted the valuation, so there once the excess is deducted there should be nearly £2500 coming our way.

With regards to the personal injury claim, yes, there is a claim in for that, too. It really, genuinely hurt! Still feeling the effects nearly two weeks later. I have many failings as a person, but sticking in a fraudulent claim for injury isn’t something I’d consider doing.

I had a personal injury claim in similar circumstances via a no-win no-fee ambulance chaser solicitor. It went like this.

They sent me to an osteopath (I know, I know) who asked me to detail the extent of my injuries with a focus on how it affected me (eg, I’d braced for impact and damaged my hand by holding onto the steering wheel; I had no grip without a lot of pain, couldn’t do things like squeeze shampoo bottles in the shower). He asked what pain killers I’d taken – this seems to be pretty key, he was really keen for me to say I’d taken them when I hadn’t. He concluded with “yeah, I’ll do you a good report” which led me to believe he was no stranger to this sort of procedure.

They forwarded this to the insurer with a claim. The insurer made an offer. They advised to reject the offer. I did. The insurer made a counter-offer, which I accepted.

They then gave me my money, less their commission which was about 30-40% of the claim. I could probably have done most of it myself. If I were to go through the process again I’d at least have made them very clear up front as to what their commission rates where, I don’t recall it ever being discussed.

Cougar – the ambulance chasers will take 25% of any settlement agreed, I believe.