Challenging the value of written off car?

My daughter has been hit from the rear in her car. Its an ’08 Civic type-r and after speaking to her insurance company it has been written off.

Her insurance company seem to contract all this stuff out to another company.  The other party has admitted liability and she has received an offer for £3290 for the car.

She is super unhappy with this amount as anything the same age and mileage seems to be between £4-5k.  How can she challenge this valuation? She has said that its worth more, but they have said they have a guide list they consult and thats its value. I appreciate that the price things are advertised at isnt what they sell for, but she feels like she doesnt have a voice in this matter.

Thanks

Ian

Send a list of the adverts to them.

she has received an offer for £3290 for the car.

As an owner of one of these I’d bite their hand off! 🙂

I see loads on FB groups struggling to sell even at that price. The only ones going for £5k+ are mint examples or nicely modded ones.

But push for £3.5k anyway!

She is super unhappy with this amount as anything the same age and mileage seems to be between £4-5k.

Provide the evidence of that, and use your own insurance company to work on your behalf (might as well get them doing what you pay them for)

Is that the actual value and what Category write off is the vehicle?

If it is a Cat, where she can remain salvage, then it may be the vehicle value minus salvage?

Most engineers will use the Glasses Guide for valuations, and they adjust for the condition and the mileage, you can do the same and go on the Glasses website.

As an owner of one of these I’d bite their hand off! 🙂

Looks like there’s a deal to be done here OP

Need to provide evidence to support that a similar car is worth more.

I had this, albeit nearly 18 years ago. So I got the paper version of Auto trader out and pointed out how much it would cost me to buy the same car in the same condition. They didn’t deem the fact that it had had new tyres and brakes relevant as that’s just normal consumables, which is fair enough. Only things were age, mileage and spec. But I did get the offer increased.

Should be easier nowadays to easily link to adverts online. Even being pessimistic you could say take 10% off the asking price of cars for sale to account for haggling.

Having been through this, sending them adverts doesn’t help, they just reply that the advertised price isn’t the selling price.

Ask them to provide a car in the same condition or repair hers might be the best option.

You are being offered the trade value. I had this recently with a similar value car in a non fault claim.I allowed the other drivers insurers to handle everything. They wrote off CAT N within 2 days just by looking at pics of the damage and offered me trade value. I pushed back and showed them ads and said you have to put me back where I was before the accident. I managed to get another £250 added on but that was just discretionary apparently. As I was keeping the car and not bothering repairing the cosmetic damage I just took it and moved on for the sake of the extra £500 I wanted.

A previous write off where I wasn’t at fault I used a claims handler who had put me in a ludicrously expensive hire car. Funnily enough I was offered the retail market value within hours of it being written off with no haggling.

Always refuse the first offer but don’t expect sale prices.

I have successfully got an increase on the initial valuation after an accident. I got a couple of examples from Auto Trader as evidence but after a friendly conversation with the assessor never needed to send them. My overall impression was that the assessor has a bit of leeway and discretion and would rather bump up an initial offer by +/-£500 than have to argue the point or make a site visit for inspection purposes. Think this is especially likely for the little guy at the bottom of the claim cost bracket that the assessor will be dealing with. Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Ok, it does kind of sound like we wont do much better. I shall report back to her. Its been deemed a Cat S, and she loved it.

Make sure you get adverts from dealers, private seller values are of no relevance and it should be made clear that you should be put in the position of buying a good car from a dealer where there is comeback, rather than one from a private seller which may have hidden issues.

You can also use eBay and filter on sold / completed to show what similar cars actually sold for

I believe that helps justify the push back for more money.

According to the ombudsman advertised prices should now be considered, so it is worth collecting adverts of similar vehicles. If you are going to complain to the ombudsman make sure you follow all the steps correctly for trying to resolve the issue with the insurance company.

Does she need the money to replace the car now?

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-can-help/insurance/motor-insurance/vehicle-valuations-write-offs

Adverts
We haven’t historically used adverts to decide whether a valuation is fair. This is because vehicles often end up selling for lower than they were advertised.

However, we’ve been told by the valuation guides that cars are selling at or close to advertised prices. So, now we typically consider adverts when assessing the market value of a vehicle.

We also find that differences in mileage or the year of registration could have a big effect on the value of the same model of vehicle. So, if you provide adverts as evidence it’s important to make sure they’re as close to the specification of your car as possible.

The answer above this is the only one you need.

Just check who’s actually paying your claim. It sounds like your daughter may be in the clutches of an accident management company? If so, be careful about whatever hire car she’s in. And you have no right of complaint against the third party insurer as you’re not their customer.

You should claim off your own company and then use the above technique to get the valuation where you want it.

If they don’t play ball, complain and then off to the ombudsman. You can take a partial payment in partial settlement of your claim, pending a decision from an ombudsman.

Depending on write off category, consider having the salvage back and flogging it on eBay?

The only car I’ve owned that was written off (fire), was valued low in my opinion. I sent the insurance company copies of the service history and invoices for work done, parts etc.

Made a £1500 difference.

Coincidental this but I just the other day got a cheque for just over a grand from Churchill, completely unprompted- I’d settled for a value I thought was totally fair for a writeoff about 6 years ago, they’d done a review and decided it was too low and they owned me £700 plus interest. The apology bit explained that they’d based it entirely on trade value not the practical real world value and that it didn’t accurately reflect the true loss to the owner. (now between you and me the original settlement was actually pretty bloody generous)

So I don’t know what exactly causes them to look at years old cases and pay people money even when you were totally satisfied with the original payout but it doesn’t seem like something you just decide to do internally without any sort of external pressure or ombudsman intervention, not so long after, it feels like “oh we might be in trouble, we’d better get ahead of that”.

So I don’t know what exactly causes them to look at years old cases and pay people money

If it’s anything like the banking industry, usually some sort of regulatory investigation and a corrective action…

So I don’t know what exactly causes them to look at years old cases and pay people money

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/01/direct-linecar-claims-underpayments-write-offs

Direct Line = Churchill = UK insurance

Thanks, that explains it! Like I say, in my case the original payout was pretty high so I guess they’re also erring on the side of caution

Ombudsman is the way to go, as bigyan says.

I had an insulting offer for a written off Lexus IS200 and a quick word with the ombudsman had a cheque for the amount I’d specified when taking out insurance posted the day after their decision. I think at this point of the year the insurance co. might have used up all their ‘free’ ombudsman referalls so it’ll cost them just to have the ombudsman involved.

There is clearly a difference between your insurance replacing the car you crashed and claiming off a third party who have admitted liability.

Does your daughter have motor legal insurance? Is it worth asking them to see if they can pursue the full value?

only time i’ve ever had a write off they offered about 30% less than it was going to take to get back in the same thing – just sent them links to 5 or 6 autotrader ads and they came straight back with a revised offer in the right ball park. I got the impression, given how quickly they revised, that it was just the standard way of doing it.

cx_monkey

Full Member
only time i’ve ever had a write off they offered about 30% less than it was going to take to get back in the same thing – just sent them links to 5 or 6 autotrader ads and they came straight back with a revised offer in the right ball park. I got the impression, given how quickly they revised, that it was just the standard way of doing it.

I think it is standard.  The company who were dealing with my wife’s written off car were so infuriating to deal with (1 hr+ queuing on the phone each time to contact them, then you’d get through and it was a terrible line to India or somewhere that you could barely make out) that we ended up just sucking up the £2-3K loss.  We had a poorly newborn and an ongoing insurance problem with our house, plus my wife has lost her job,  so at the time we simply didn’t have the time or mental capacity to go through the ombudsman process.

**** infuriating to be honest but I drew a line under it as I figured the toll on our mental health simply wasn’t worth the money.

I’ve been through this, but years ago.

Lots of adverts, as similar as possible to my car (esp: colour, mileage) with higher prices but also ads showing how inferior a replacement could be bought for their initial offer (i.e. higher mileage, older models etc for the money being offered), worked for me.

Since then, selling prices have got a lot closer to advertised prices as well.