Insurance payout query

balsingh

I'm gonna try not to make this too long but after after a recent non-fault accident, the third party insurer agreed to payout on my car which was written off. Their first offer was very low so I rejected it and sent in evidence to prove that car was worth more. They eventually rejected this and said that they werent preapred to pay any more. Their excuse was that the car I provded evidence for was a different model. In fact, the car I provided evidence for was a lower model as my car shoudl have been worth even more.

The current status is that my insurer says they can't do any more and that I shoudl accept the offer and then put in a claim with the Insurance Ombudsman. I get the feeling that my insurer can't be bothered with it and don't want me to push it further as they want me to just accep the offer and close the case.

Firstly, is there anything further I can do? Reject the offer again? Do I have a right to go against my insurer's recommendations?
Secondly, if I do accept the offer, how do I contact the insurance ombudsman? The insurer were very reclutant to tell me how to do this.

Thanks in advance,
Bal.

hjb123

Is the car definately damaged beyond any repair? Would it maybe be cheaper to get the car repaired rather than go through the insurance?

This thread is of a similar tale and may have some advice on there.

There is a Financial Ombudsman Service that you may be able to find some help through

balsingh

The car is clearly beyond repair. It has been written off as a Cat B ie. the insurer will take the car and it will be broken for spares.

My concern is whether I have an opportunity to get a better payout on the car as I feel they have undervalued the car.

Astaroth

If you are claiming directly from the third party insurers rather than through your own then the Financial Ombudsman Service (replaced the insurance ombudsman about 6 years ago) will 99.9% of the time be unable to get involved as it is there to protect customers rights and you are not a customer of the third party insurer.

The first thing to check of cause is the fact your expectations are correct. From what you are saying it sounds like you have fallen into the typical trap of looking at things like autotrader? The problem with using this as your "proof" is the fact that I could put a 01 plate ford fiesta 1.1 in there for £50,000 and then someone else putting in an insurance claim could use my advert as proof that their fiesta was worth £50k.... the important thing is the price that vehicles are actually selling at on the private market and not the price they are advertised at.

The industry as a whole (as supported by the FOS) use the Glass guide for valuing vehicles - their website (http://www.glass.co.uk/) allows you to get a reasonable basis of price if you look at the private sale value. After getting their valuation you then need to deduct from the price the majority of the cost of getting all the minor scratches, bumps etc fixed.

You could ask your insurers to take over handling the claim for you but this may well mean that you will end up out of pocket. The third party insurers will have paid for an engineer to value your vehicle and so would not pay your insurance companies engineer fee as it would be your choice to have had 2 engineer reports conducted where legally 1 would have done. Because of this your insurers may either ask you to pay the engineer report costs (can be up to £150) or simply say they cannot become involved now.

The only other option open to you as a third party, if you decide after viewing glass that you are being short changed is to issue court proceedings after sending a 14 day notice letter. In case you dont know, you would issue proceedings against the other driver and not their insurance company (though it is their insurance company that answers the summons)

balsingh

Thanks. Really usefull info there. They did mention that the Glass guide was their bible and I have to say that I did use a selection of ads from the Autotrader, Loot, Exchange/Mart as my evidence.

mikey-mike_2

There are a few errors in the posts above but to really comment sensibly we need more info.

What was the car, age, miles, condition and what offer have they made?