HI all,

Well following on from the HGV shunt topic I had the other day the insurance company’s assessors’ have declared my car as a total loss – which is really very annoying – considering I’m a no fault. A Royal mail HGV ploughed into me – he admitted I was in his blind spot.
It’s a 9 year Golf that has never broken down or suffered any issue, I always maintained it through the main dealer. In sum it probably not replaceable at whatever value they try to fob me off with.
How do they value an old car? Private sale used car price, dealer value?
Thanks

You have to be ready to fight your corner. They will lowball you with the first offer, but you don’t have to accept it. Get examples of equivalent cars for sale from dealers within your area with similar histories and mileage.

If RM’s insurance persists with low offers and refuses to put you back in the position you were in before, then another option is to start preparing a small claim directly against RM for the appropriate amount. You are under no obligation to settle with their insurer for whatever figure they’ve plucked out of the air, liability rests with RM.

What ever they value it at it will be way lower than what you are expecting

Be ready to contest the number that they suggest, but ensure that you have some good evidence of a number of comparable cars to yours, all with a full service history and all for sale at a dealer – preferably a VW dealer.

You should be able to increase the payout by 20%+

Son just had his car written off – first offer was way down, he refused it, next offer was over what he paid for it. So, as said, hold out for the amount you need to replace it.

My experience was they pull a figure out of thin air that’s usually about 2/3 the price you can actually buy an equivalent for. Even when you send them every one of the same car on Autotrader and all of them are more than they’ve offered.

Often the advice on here when you aren’t at fault is, once they offer you an amount, ask the insurer to source you an equivalent car for that price or repair your own car. If it ever happens to me again that’s what I’ll be doing.

Thanks all. Pithy thing to say but it feels like a death.
I have full service history always with the dealer and even a warranty.

What ever they value it at it will be way lower than what you are expecting

Actually, on the occasion it happened to me they offered considerably over what ‘Parkers’ etc were quoting. I bit their arm off.

but ensure that you have some good evidence of a number of comparable cars to yours, all with a full service history and all for sale at a dealer – preferably a VW dealer.

That’s the key – ensure you can demonstrate the value of a range of comparable vehicles. However, the approach the insurer takes means they don’t have to be guided by adverts, but will probably adopt the view of the FOS:

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

“To decide whether your insurer’s valuation is reasonable, we’ll look at specialist online trade guides for an indication of what a fair valuation should be. If your insurer’s valuation is in line with the trade guides, we’re likely to agree with it. But if we think the valuation is unfair, we’ll tell your insurer to adjust it using the guide prices.

We don’t normally use adverts to decide whether a valuation is fair. This is because vehicles often end up selling for a lower than they were advertised. We also find that differences in mileage or year of registration can have a big effect on the value of the same model of vehicle.”

Son just had his car written off –

Did a bus hit him while he was in a bus lane?

This is because vehicles often end up selling for a lower than they were advertised

These days they don’t, they tend to advertise pretty close to lowest you’ll get it for because it’s all online these days

Get going with ads for sale for similar cars, list of extras, dealer service history, the lot. What my boss used to call the “doooof” effect – compile a case in response to their typically low-is offer that they up it quite a bit.

I’ve had to do this for a couple of cars, and while a pin, I’ve got a satisfactory resolution (one was for a 205 GTI that got nicked, very good payout, and the other a old model Saab 900 that got written off after someone pulled out from a side road without looking – again, pretty good offer second time).

I think RM self insure- is it your ins co that have assessed it? If they are going to recover from RM then you should be pushing them to get the best deal possible for you.

If your car is a write off, have you got a hire car in the meantime? All the while they have to foot that bill they’ll be keen to settle. Don’t forget to use the hire car to go new car searching- once the claims paid, the hire car has to go back.

At 9 years old is it a mk6?

No they’re dragging their feet on the hire car as mine is still drivable.
Yea, mk6 TSI.

I’ve got a mk5 with dull grey cloth seats (the car is foc grey paint and a po put on grey alloys) – if yours were leather & heated I’d be tempted to see if you wanted to swap before it goes! Might help lessen the insurance hit!

I’ve been told that mk6 don’t go into mk5 tho not sure if true

If you were happy with your car and its still drivable can you look to buy it off the insurers and get it repaired? Maybe accept a slightly lower offer if you can keep the car. It’ll be classed as a write off making insurance trickier and lowering resale so allow for that.

Well for those glued to this thread: they have actually offered me quite a bit more than i thought, so going to take it. This is somewhat hopelessly offset by the scarcity and massive prices of used cars!

Keep the payout and find out what they want for your present car. As long as its roadworthy then crack on.

If RM’s insurance persists with low offers and refuses to put you back in the position you were in before,

I’d be surprised if RM actually has an insurer (at least for the value of a 9 year old golf). I’m not sure if that is good news for you – but a friend in a similar situation with a very large bus company (who self insure) found them incredibly easy to deal with, their staff were obviously trained to make it as simple as possible to avoid the temptation to pass to a claims handling firm who would inflate it with hire cars for months, etc.

My experience recently (Admiral, but I’d assume they all follow a similar script) is this:

You get three offers, they bear absolutely no resemblance to whatever links to autotrader or ebay that you provide. So don’t waste too much of your life trying to find your exact car/mileage/paint code.

After 3 attempts you can either accept it or move on with your life.

I accepted (you can do this without prejudicing the ombudsman’s decision if you want to), bought the wreck back off them for 100, sold the wheels and tires for 275 (put the worn winters back on), stereo, swapped the battery for an old knackered one then scrapped it for 300. So all in all probably got more for it than I would have selling it.

n.b. the payout is apparently supposed to reflect what you could sell the car for (or buy it privately), so they’re looking at the private/trade-in columns of Parkers, not the A1 column.

Actually they offered me about a third more than I saw on Glass/Parkers/Autotrader etc
Might finally get that Seat estate I’ve been ogling.