no fault accident wrote off my beloved car

eira

No-the salvage price was £52.40 which seemed to have the proviso that I cashed the cheque. The low valuation came from Glass, the others from various websites. Spent this afternoon scouring around the better dealers for prices. Rang the one I originally bought the car from and he said (totally unprompted) that buying a used BMW of that age was 'tricky as they were 'popular amongst younger drivers'.His stance was that a lot of BMWs of that age had been hammered into the ground. i suspect that there are roughly two caregories -the hammered ones and the ones that are 'cherished' for lack of a better word. But I thought the valuations were odd -but a trawl through the net keep producting the same results. the gist of it is that I am never going to get another car like that in that condition for what I'm being offered by the insurance company.

Will go round garages tomorrow and see what the complaints section at LV come up with on Monday

i should add that other car valuation sites have come up with far higher valuations as well

dacouch

Unfortunately the Ombudsman normally only takes notice of valuations from Parkers, Glass's and Cap's. They will not normally take any notice of any other website guide prices.

They will normally not take any notice of the opinion of a car salesman but will take notice of an independent engineer.

Adverts for cars are generally regarded as the price the seller is inviting to start negoiations to sell at so the actual price on adverts are not regarded as a guide.

Have a read of these guidance notes and case histories from the Insurance Ombudsman (Insurers have to take notice of his guidance)

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/66/66-vehicle_valuation_disputes.html

You are quite fortunate as the amount your Insurer has deducted for salvage is actually very very low, I would have expected them to value the salvage between £100 and £250. Bear in mind that when you are looking at what the Insurer are offering you it is the total amount of the salvage price, your excess and the amount you physically receive

EdGasket

Stop dealing with insurers ! Say you reject their settlement and will be claiming your losses off the third party directly; its the only way in this situation...unless you want your car written off plus a few hundred quid. See my earlier post.

Gavin83

EdGasket wrote: »

Stop dealing with insurers ! Say you reject their settlement and will be claiming your losses off the third party directly; its the only way in this situation...unless you want your car written off plus a few hundred quid. See my earlier post.

Won't it end up going to the insurers anyway as the other driver will just get their insurer to defend them and they'll most likely offer the value of the car, which Im sure the courts will agree with.

I can't see what difference this will make.

dacouch

You can issue against the other driver and their Insurers will ultimately pay the claim. Bear in mind that under UK law you are obliged to mitigate your losses, it is unlikely a judge will agree to pay you say £2000 to repair a car when it could be replaced for say £1000.

TRADESIZE

if you have a car thats borderline classic and your only have a market value policy, you should have bought an 'agreed value' policy, this is a specialist policy for classics where they are insured for 'enthusisast' vaule in efffect
Shoukd be be lucky enough to get a value you acan get an equivalnet for next time try to get an agreed value policy, dont expect a market value policy to settle for the true worth of a 'classic' or potential classic

dacouch

Only problem with a classic car policy is they are generally only available to cars over a certain age (Typically 15 or 20 years). They are also generally only available if the car is kept in a locked garage when it's at the home address at nightime, does a low mileage eg under 5000 miles and is your second car (There are exceptions to these requirements).

They would agree a reasonable value with you at the outset, they have access to fairly accurate guides so they would not neccessarily accept the £2000 value etc

Sidmon

What BMW is it?

TRADESIZE

dacouch wrote: »

Only problem with a classic car policy is they are generally only available to cars over a certain age (Typically 15 or 20 years). They are also generally only available if the car is kept in a locked garage when it's at the home address at nightime, does a low mileage eg under 5000 miles and is your second car (There are exceptions to these requirements).

They would agree a reasonable value with you at the outset, they have access to fairly accurate guides so they would not neccessarily accept the £2000 value etc

Ok, I know about them too.

Sometimes but not all the time they have limited mileage
Sometimes but not all the time you cannot use or obtain your no claims bonus
Its not mandatory they are kept on a drive or in a garage with all companies
Most of the time they are significantly cheaper than a normal 'market value' policy
They dont all require the 'classic' car to be your second car
Specialist insuers are much more willing to not make a fuss about modifications. Normal insurers hate modificatins. They only like dealing with 'unmolested' factory spec vehicles
Specialist insueres are not ususlly bother about LHD/imports

eg my friends brother has a tidy 1972 beetle, he's 17 - just passed his test. Insured with specialist footman james he wont pick up any no claims bonues and is limited to 8000 miles a year, but its in £435 per year, plus agreed value £2000. Normal insurer £2300 + per year!!! its his only car

The best ones are
Footman James and Adrian Flux. I have a 1990 VW multivan T3 LHD myself (you may not know what one of those is), argeed value £7000 , limited mileage 6k, £290 pe year. Its my only car

Footman James are probably the best, 10 years of my own experience of insuring my own cars says so!

Whether they will insurer the same make and model as your replacement beemer only they will be able to answer, but if your current insurer increase your pre accidnet value your £53 salvage value will also increase

1956

Hey, phoning a dealer is certainly not a requirement under TCF. Is this car mint?? as described and worth 2K?, Bear in mind the Lv engineers will have either seen images of the car and based the value on age,Condition (every body seems to have a mint car when it comes to insurance total loss claims makes you wonder how garges keep going with all these car with no faults!!L.O.L) & mileage etc from the relevant guides and examples, or seen it in person and valued accordingly and within the TCf and ombudsman rules, they do it far more than 6 times a day, and of the few ombudsman referrals , we are currently winning more than we lose.
But I would say that I am a Lv engineer
cheers