How do you negotiate with insurer after write-off?

leitmotif

Hi all,


Our car has been written off after a hit-and-run. The insurer has offered us an amount that seems pretty fair (they say it's based on CAP's Market Value Manager), but is a little on the low side. We spoke to our car dealership (from whom we bought the vehicle and with whom we have always had servicing done, etc., including a recent MOT) and they said that our car would cost £500 more than the offer we've received. I would like to negotiate with the insurer to get the extra £500. How does one go about doing such a thing, particularly when their offer is not unfair, it's just at the lower end of a valuation range? I've never done this before and it feels like they have all the power, especially when an ombudsman might say their offer isn't grossly unreasonable.

TSx

Here you go - the Financial Ombudsman approach to valuations: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html

This has been updated recently and advice used to be to find adverts for similar cars and present these to the insurer but the FOS doesn't hold much weight with these

Vehicles are often sold for less than the advertised price – and differences in mileage, the year of registration, model type etc can significantly affect their value.

This means that generally – although they can be helpful in some cases – advertisements for similar vehicles are not particularly useful when deciding complaints.

In most cases, they will check all three value guides (Parker's, Glasses and CAPS) and if the offer is in line with at least two of them, they will uphold the valuation

As a side note, your dealer may be saying it would cost £500 more to buy it, but if you walked in off the street with cash to buy the odds are they would be reducing the sale price anyway - very few people buy cars at the sticker price.

leitmotif

Thanks for your answer. Yes, I've seen that, and I took the above into consideration. I'm just averse to thinking that the initial offer could be decent. After all, the only advice I've ever heard (when others were in this situation) was don't accept the first offer, it's invariably low.

TSx

It depends on the company - I work for an insurer and we will always put forward an offer we believe to be fair and reasonable straight away (we don't ever work to the principle of lowballing to try and get someone to settle).

Most companies probably work this way now - it's much more effective to just make a fair offer straight away, rather than make a low offer, spend time (which equals money!) on negotiating and end up with the same result.

If you think it's fair, accept it - if you think it's unfair, fight it - but you'll need some basis on which to do that.

edit: I have no doubt at all that there are insurers who reduce offers deliberately - but I think most are probably fair these days - there is a regulatory requirement to "treat customers fairly" and most claims teams I've seen take this very seriously.