Stolen Car Value

Thepilot88

Hi All,
My name is Simone I am Italian 33 year old and i live in the UK since last year.

On July 2017 I've purchased my first car here in the UK, a Peugeot 308 1.6L registered in 2015 which i paid 8600£, with no finance. The car has been insured with Halifax (almost 1000 £ as i have 0 NCB and no driving experience here in the UK).

On mid April 2018 my car has been unfortunately stolen from my driveway in edinburg:mad: and here there's a list of what happened after that. (questions are at the end)

1) Contacted the police to report the car theft and the house break in
2) Contacted the insurance company in order to report the car theft.
3)On the following day I've been contacted by Sabre insurance (who apparently operates on behalf of Halifax, and it will be the insurance company I'll have to deal with for the claim) who opened a new claim for me, and asked me for some details
4) After a few days I've received via post a series of documents I had to fill regarding what happened (stolen car form, and a lot of details which I've expected they would have been asking me )
5) Sabre told me also that, since the car is worth more than 5000£, I should have to expect to be contacted by an independent agent, operating on their behalf, who would have been come to my house in order to do an investigation and to ask me additional question.
6) The agent (from Brownsword Group) came the following week, and together we've completed a very detailed report (he wanted to know where i was, who I have been with, he took pictured of the house and the place where the car was and so on). He also told me that this is a quite common practice as a few weeks before having it stolen I've been to a garage to have my car evaluated for a possible change. When this happens the car is registered into a specific database (HPI??) and if the insurance company sees that a stolen car has been previously tried to be sold by the owner often require an investigation, fair enough, I've nothing to hide.
7) I've been then contacted by another agent from an engineering company (Total Loss Settlement Services) who communicated me the value of my car which surprisingly has been set as 8500£! They told me that my insurance will deduct excesses and so on and then they will clear the payment. I was quite surprised to hear such an high value, i was expecting something around 6.5 and 7k !

Now finally the questions:

a) Since this estimate has been done by a third independent company, on their behalf, can i really expect the Sabre to pay me 8500 £ (minus 250£ excess) or is this just an estimate and will they try to give me less by negotiating the price ? (bare in mind that they know how much I paid the car when I initially purchased it )
b) I case what the offer will be lower, what would be the acceptable reasons why they could offer me less?

Thanks everyone!

Simone

GunJack

I'd be surprised if the insurance co. went against their own independent assessment, just wait for the offer letter to come from the insurance company and be prepared to haggle if need be.

flashg67

If they do offer less, might be worth looking online, say on Autotrader, for similar cars for sale & what they're selling for.

I squeezed a few quid from an insurance valuation by showing them adds of what it would cost to replace the car like for like.

Nodding_Donkey

If they offer less just refer them to their assessors valuation.

Happy days