It’s only when you get involved at the sharp end of insurance, viz, some sort of claim, that you realise why premiums are so ridiculous. The whole repair/write-off procedure is a stitch-up job between the insurance companies, their affiliated/approved bodyshops and the car industry.
Instead of aiming to repair vehicles to a good standard at an economic cost, the whole industry is geared to using OE parts at ridiculous prices and replacing minimally damaged items even when they could simply be repaired.
There’s so much wrong with it all. The needless scrapping of perfectly viable vehicles with its associated cost to the planet. The constantly rising premiums. All sorts of Catch 22 buffoonery.
As an example, our T5 was written off as ‘beyond economic repair’ on the basis of mostly front end damage because despite the obvious needed repairs being considerably less than the value of the vehicle, the inspection engineer thought there was the possibility of invisible internal damage to the gearbox, which wouldn’t be apparent until work was carried out.
If the gearbox was damaged, it would have to be replaced at OE VAG prices, so probably up towards the £10k mark. The lunacy of this, of course, is that you can get a perfectly good reconditioned box fitted for between £1000 and £1500.
So the van’s technically a write-off on the basis of damage which may not even have happened and, even if it has, can be rectified quite easily. Bonkers.
Plus people seem to think that insurance pay-outs are magical things that float around without reference to anything else, like your premium for example.
I wish someone would launch an eco policy which undertook to repair at reasonable cost where possible and gave you sensible options in situations like the above: we’d happily have gone ahead with insurance repairs on the basis that if the box was damaged, it would be replaced with a reconditioned item for example.
Anyway…
