Advice on settlement claim for car insurance

bozzy18

Urgent advice please:

Recently, I was involved in a road traffic accident and whilst trying to get my car repaired the insurance company had my car inspected by an independent engineer and decided that the car is "uneconomical to repair". The insurance company has offered me a settlement of £750 less the policy excess. They said the amount is based on research on similar cars currently on sale both privately and through the motor trade. I am not sure this is accurate as I did a little bit of research myself and find the average price to be around the £1,500 mark. Its a Volvo 940 Turbo N registration with around 140k on the clock.

Has anyone ever rejected the offer and what wordings do you use to reject this offer and what happens next?

They also said that my "car will shortly be moved from its current location to a place of free and safe storage however it cannot remain there indefinitely. I will be disposing of your car in fourteen days time therefore if you have any objections to this, please let me know as soon as possible. " This is mightily inconvenient for me. The car is still drivable and I need to use it - is it possible to accept the money, keep the car and dispose of the car myself at a later date?

Any advice you could possibly offer me would be very much appreciated.

Thank you all.

Boz.

Astaroth

Are you looking at the "offer price" or the "sale price"? I can ultimate post an advert offering a Volvo 940 Turbo N reg with 140k miles on the clock for £45,000 but that doesnt mean I will be able to sell it as that price.

You are entitled to reject their offer and generally speaking they will ask for proof that you have seen the vehicle sold at a higher price which will generally mean adverts from Autotrader or equiv being sent in. As a rule of thumb they will call the people advertising and ask if they will except less than the asking price etc (typically they do naturally).

By the sounds of it it is a class C or D total loss, ie it is purely economics rather than safety that is meaning it is a write off. If this is the case it may be possible for you to retain the car but they will deduct the salvage value from the settlement cheque. In otherwords if they would get £250 for selling the car for scrap you would get the £750 - £250 - Excess.

You would need to check with your insurers on the conditions required for you to get the vehicle back on the road and insured if you do keep it. Some insurers will insist that you must have a new MOT done on it to prove it is road safe and that they will only cover it for TPO (third party only) rather than TPFT or Comp

dacouch

Where have you got those quotes from, I've just had a look on Autotrader and the prices range from £350 to £1100 for similar Volvos.

As Astaroth car adverts do not indicate the value of a car, they are seen as opening
invitations to negoiate, so the actual price they sell for is generally a bit less than the adverts. The adverts can however be a help but when using adverts you really need to be looking at adverts for the same model and same or similar year / mileage

http://search.autotrader.co.uk/es-uk/www/cars/VOLVO+940/Ne-2-4-5-6-7-8-27-44-49-53-61-64-67-103-133-146-236,N-240-4294966118-4294966794/search.action?&postcode=ng2+3ab&radius=100&showMoreOptions=&referrer=quick&page=2&googleQuery=VOLVO%20940%20sales&adtype=autotrader-uk

mattymoo

Prices on ebay motors ranged from £18 :eek: to £460 for 95/96 Volvo 940's.
Ebay is a good price check because it shows the price the vehicle sold for, not the pie in the sky expectations of the owner.

To be honest, £750 is starting to sound quite reasonable.

Hey_Dude

Most insurance orgs will not consider ebay as comparitive evidence.

They should however consider autotrader.

When looking on autotrader, look for like-for-like matches - same make, model, age, doors, engine etc etc.

And importanly use your home postcode as you cannot really argue regional variations.

Good luck,

Duder