Help, my car's been written off!

libbydoll

A big lorry smashed into my parked car two weeks ago..my daughters both under four were in the back of my car and my husband in the front. Thankfully they were not hurt, but Direct Line informed us today that our car is a write off. The lorry driver has taken full responsibility. The current book price of ur car is £3200, and to buy our car back, same age miles, model, would be £4100. Direct line have offered us £2600. I'm devastated. Our car was fab. Never a days bother with it, a lovely family car. Can I argue that my car was worth more? I'm going to have to down grade my car as we have no spare cash to add to the pot. I feel like we've done nothing wrong, and we're paying for someone elses mistake.
Any advice would be great, We've never been in a situation like this before.

Keith

Hi,

Glad every one is ok, its time to do a little leg work, go on autotrader/ebay and find every advert which matchs your car, send copies to your insurers with a letter rejecting their offer as you can not replace your vehicle with that amount of money.

I'm not sure on the correct wording of the letter, but if you go and find the adverts now, someone else will be along shortly to provide the right wording.

Good luck

Quintain_2

Exactly the same happened to us some 6 years ago. Mrs Q's little car was rammed by a dustcart whilst parked. We'd bought it at 3 months old with 3,000 miles clocked, and after 3 more years had done a total of 8,500 miles.

At that mileage it was irreplaceable, but mileage is not taken into consideration by the insurers.

I argued and argued, and sent off newspaper adverts of the same model cars for sale, but only succeeded in getting the offer up by £100.

Still feel done!!!

doelani

hope you get a better offer, my car was in accident on 4 May again other driver admitted responsabilyty. Allianz informed us last Firday that car was a write off but we have not had offer yet, book price for our car is about £3500 but I know we could not get equivilant car for that amount. I hope to have offer for end off week and we have seen a car we like which the dealer has said he will hold for us if we pay him deposit. I am scared to take chance as at teh minute really could not make up any shortfall.

just have to keep fingers crossed for us both

libbydoll

it's rotten, isn't it. I just feel sick all the time. Hope you get a better deal than me. I'm taking Keiths advice today, to start preparing my fight!

doelani

I have just doen the same lol printed of a used car valuation from whatcar which says

Dealer £4275
Private £3775
Part ex £3575


So hope to get at least the part exchange value . Makes me sick though as we only bought car in May 06 and paid £5k for it. Makes you wonder why incurance companies bother to ask the value of your car when you are insuring it

lisyloo

You certainly should be able to get better.
Consider going throught their complaints procedure and on to the insurance ombudsman.

However do bear in mind that adverts show asking prices.
On the whole the asking price is not the same as the sale prie so bear that in mind.

Even so, there does seem to be a bit of a gap, so I think you should be able to get an improvement by arguing.

flutterby_lil

Hi the same happened to us. Our car was stolen in Jan when we were on holiday. We bought it for £12,999 in May 2004 with inheritence left by my finace's dad when he died. We received £6,750 from our insurers. They work on glass's guide for figures. we sent off evidence from auto trader and adverts from the internet showing they were being sold for more but many of them were delaers selling so they said they mark up the price to include warranties etc and so wouldn't up the price, we had to settle for that, and £250 was excess so we ended up with £6.5k. rather annoying really, we only just got our new car last thursday, took ages to sort out!!

Hope you get a better offer, just glad that everybody is ok....It may be worth paying the £3.50 from glass guide on internet and seeing what the value of the car is with them. Most insureres value on this guide.(https://www.glass.co.uk)

Good luck.