Buying written-off car back from insurance company – problems?

My wife’s 10yr old Vectra got hit from behind on Monday & is almost certainly a write-off, but as it’s fairly minimal damage (still drivable and MOT’able) we want to buy it back from the insurance company.

Anyone got any experience of this?
It will be cat C or D I guess, so will I have problems getting insurance in the future? Can I put it straight back on the road (we’re still using it actually) or do I need to get it inspected? Any other complications??

Cheers

I had a similar accident last year and got an accident management company to sort it rather than use my insurance – they were very good and saved me a lot of hassle.

The third partie’s insurance co. made an offer minus 10% and told me to keep my car as salvage. I wasn’t given any other option and according to the acc. management co. this is what usually happens now as it saves the insurance companies time and money in not having to deal with written off cars.

I had my car repaired and put back on the road. Once its been declared a write off you have to take it to a vosa station to be inspected – not for the quality of repairs just to make sure all the chassis numbers are correct and you’re not trying to register a “rung” car. You’ll then be sent a new V5 which will state that the car has been involved in an accident.

I think some insurance cos. expect you get an mot at this point but I’m not sure. Probably worth doing anyway for peace of mind.

The only way it affected my insurance is that the car is worth a lot less in the case of a payout but its a good idea to inform the insurance co. that the car is now a cat c/d.

IIRC cat D you don’t need an inspection, it’s just for cars that need a £500 bit of bodywork on a £400 car.

C is repairable but requires an inspection.

B is scrap, but parts can be re-used.

A is scrap, nothing can be re-used.

You could be right about not needing an inspecton for a cat D. Mine was cat C and I had to get it done.

I think the definition of cat C is “cost of repairs exceeds the vehicles value”

On low value cars this is quite easy to achieve.

The third partie’s insurance co. made an offer minus 10% and told me to keep my car as salvage

Mdavids – just out of interest, did you accept the first offer or were you able to negotiate it up?

Local repair shop told me not to accept their first offer, just not sure how realistic it is to negotiate with a big insurance company!

If you take it form the insurance company is it still recorded as an insurance write off, if so this will affect future resale value. Much better to agree a cash settlement figure I’d say and then keep and repair the car.

future resale isn’t really a consideration as we’d always planned to run this car until it died. Just don’t want it to die right now!

Actually the fact it will be virtually worthless will mean we’ll only need to insure it 3rd party, so that will save some cash too!

The car was valued by an independant inspector arranged by the acc. management co. and the valuation was miles better than I had been expecting so I was more than happy to go along with it. As long as the third party ins. agree with the valuation then you’re ok.

I think this is where using the acc. management co. really helped. In the past I have had cars badly undervalued when assessed by the third parties insurance.

Having a hire car paid for by them helps as well as they are in more of a hurry to settle to avoid running up hire costs

Edit
I’m off to work now so cant reply but if you have any more questions legoman you can email me or I’ll reply to the thread later

We had a similar thing last year.

Big dent in side, uneconomical to repair.

Took a £100 less than write off value and kept the car. Made the dent as tidy as possible and pocketed £1600

The important bit was speaking to the chief engineer from the insurance company.