Insurance Write Off- not a fair price given by 3rd party insurers ! HELP

forgotmyname

Yes selling to a breaker or companies that buy salvage wont get much profit. But on ebay it will easily double/triple your money with no effort.

£151 to get it back and it will be gone within the week with a BIN or best offer listing.

You dont have to do the work yourself. Plenty of place will fit a door for very little money.

Use the same person that fitted the engine?

Aretnap

AdrianC wrote: »

I rather suspect the latter. There's no way the insurer would write a two grand car off for a door.

Maybe. But even if the insurers are offering something more like a grand that would still be enough to buy the car back, get the door fixed and have money left over.

attila_

A car with a replaced engine generally puts buyers off, as you don't know the quality of assembly, whether the clutch and gearbox are the same etc.

I would expect the valuation to be increased because of a newer engine installed.

jaynek65

Hi All,

Its the insurance company who have valued it at £1890 (thats what they have ofered him anyway) He paid £2000 for it in July this yr, so overall not a bad loss, except for the cost of the newish engine !!!

We spoke to the estimator and he said when doing repairs they have to use new parts from the main dealer, and these are expensive to buy, and sometimes they have to spray the whole side of the car to make the paint a good match. , hense why written off just for a door, Seems totally crazy to me, but i'm no expert in these things. A whole car gets crushed just for that...madness !

My son is now looking for a car in the same price bracket, and being young he's limited on what he can buy, engine size wise and insurance wise (he paid over £1400 in insurance on that car ) so finding a replacement in proving troublesome. what makes it worse is even though he still hasnt had the chq from the 3rd party, they took his hire car off him on xmas eve, leaving him stranded without a car, One serious complaint coming there way for that I can tell you !!.

Oh well, back to trawling the net for a replacement :-)

dacouch

Which Insurer is paying actually paying for the claim eg are your own Insurer paying the claim and deducting the excess or is the claim being paid directly by the third party Insurers?

Or as I suspect are you dealing with an accident management company who have valued the car and are then getting the other Insurer to pay?

AdrianC

jaynek65 wrote: »

Seems totally crazy to me, but i'm no expert in these things. A whole car gets crushed just for that...madness !

Except it won't be. It'll go into a salvage auction, get sold off, repaired, and resold.

Or he can take the money, keep the car, and get that done himself.

JustinR1979

AdrianC wrote: »

Or he can take the money, keep the car, and get that done himself.

I must be missing something, as to not do this seems crazy.
Is a win win situation.
Gets that engine back that keeps getting mentioned too.

nidO

jaynek65 wrote: »

Seems totally crazy to me, but i'm no expert in these things. A whole car gets crushed just for that...madness !

jaynek65 wrote: »

Oh well, back to trawling the net for a replacement :-)

You seem to be significantly missing the point that a few people are making to you, by going on about the car being scrapped, your son losing out, etc etc.

The insurer have offered you £1,890.

You can take this £1,890 then buy the car back from them for £151.

You have been quoted £600 to repair the damage, and can probably get it done for much less if as suggested you just go buy a replacement door from a breakers for a tenner then take it to a small garage, but assume £600 as a worst case.

Insurance company gives you £1,890.
You spend £151 of this buying the car back, then £600 repairing it.

Your son is left with his original car and its newer engine, fixed, and has spent £751 of his £1,890 insurance payout fixing it, leaving him with £1,139 profit on top of his fixed car.
Why are you even considering doing anything else?

Aretnap

jaynek65 wrote: »

We spoke to the estimator and he said when doing repairs they have to use new parts from the main dealer, and these are expensive to buy, and sometimes they have to spray the whole side of the car to make the paint a good match. , hense why written off just for a door, Seems totally crazy to me, but i'm no expert in these things. A whole car gets crushed just for that...madness !

That's how the insurance company would do it, yes, and that's why old cars can get written off for fairly minor damage. Punters would complain if they were left with a second hand door which was a different colour to the rest of the car, after all.

However if you buy it back and get it fixed yourself you don't have to go down the same route. You can get a door from a scrapyard if you like, and if you're not comfortable fitting it yourself you can pay a backstreet garage (perhaps the same one that changed the engine) to fit it for you. If you're not too bothered about an exact colour match you don't have to pay for the respray and if you don't mind having different keys for the driver's and passanger's sides then you don't have to pay to get the locks changed. The whole proces will be considerably cheaper than the price of an equivalent replacement car from a dealer, and considerably less than the £1890 the insurers are giving you. You can keep the money that's left over. Sounds like a fairly small amount of hassle for a very big saving to me.

shaun_from_Africa

Who was it that quoted £600 for the repair?

If they are going to charge £600, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they could do the work themselves for half of this amount, so why not see if they would be interested in buying the car from your son.

If he buys the write off for £151 and sells it to the repairers, I'm sure that he could make an instant profit and if the repairers could do the repair for £300 or £400, they would be able to resell the repaired car for a profit as well.