DRO Application + Car Valuation + 22 year old car

anneatkins

My car is a 22 years old Volkswagen Passat, handed down to me by a family member, for free. Neither of the websites stepchange recommend give me a valuation based on my number plate. 

What am I supposed to do? Surely when your car is a common brand not like a Bentley or something and over 20 years old, a valuation is kind of useless? 

I suppose I could break lockdown rules and go garage to garage in case someone will do one - but since no one wants to buy this car; I know they won’t without trying to get money out of me which, since I have £10 in the bank, other than my DRO fee which I have in cash, is not going to happen. 

Is there any suggestion?

anneatkins

Oh and the other thing; I could try and get it scrapped but it runs well and I don’t want to. Also, they will only accept valuations from 2 specific websites; but I could get a scrap value but not a sale value.

sourcrates

Hi,
In that case you just list it as say £500 as its value is well below the £1000 limit.
The value is not checked, as long as its below £1000 it does not matter. 

You just tell your DRO advisor, when/if they ask, that its value is under the £1000 limit.
That`s all you need to do, Job done.

anneatkins

sourcrates said:

Hi, no
In that case you just list it as say £500 as its value is well below the £1000 limit.
The value is not checked, as long as its below £1000 it does not matter. 

You just tell your DRO advisor, when/if they ask, that its value is under the £1000 limit.
That`s all you need to do, Job done.

In my application it literally says £500 because that’s what I listed it on my insurance, and yet they persist in telling me that ‘we cannot move forward until we have your valuation.’ 

I was on the telephone for 20 mins trying websites and they said literally to go garage to garage and that they then need it on garage letterhead. Everything else is entirely done.
(And sorry; but I honestly wouldn’t waste anyone’s time here if I didn’t find their advice a tad strange!)

sammyjammy

I would make a complaint or ask to speak to someone higher up, thats a ridiculous request to make even without the risk of COVID!!!

anneatkins

Now 18 minutes on the phone with this guy insisting that I cannot say my car is worth less than 1k if I cannot prove it is worth less than 1k.  

anneatkins

So I’ve just now got off the phone. In the end they googled the type and year of car, what someone just arbitrarily posted on eBay (I could have done that a week ago!) and used that price. I’m mentally exhausted over this. Should be done though now; only took a week to sort this last thing out.

thank you all!

sourcrates

Who are you using as an intermediary ?

anneatkins

sourcrates said:

Who are you using as an intermediary ?

Stepchange. 

ldhme

That does seem odd.
Stepchange never questioned the valuation on my partners car when she went through them.
I valued it at 700 I think. When they asked what car it was and they heard: 12 year old Peugeot 407 with 150,000 miles, they literally just went "yep, that's fine".

sourcrates

Stepchange have recently taken on many new staff.
It could be that some people interpret the rules differently to others.

When I did my DRO I simply listed my car as under £1000 and it wasn’t questioned.
I think you just got unlucky with the advisor you were allocated.