Damage done to flooring by delivery company

Isleofskye

Hello everyone,

I hope someone can give me some advice.
several months ago a delivery company damaged our very expensive hard wood floor.

The insurers deemed it unrepairable and asked me to get a quote showing how much it would cost to replace the floor and all the costs.

Because of health issues and an elderly person in the house we do not want the stress of going through a refurbishment.
They agreed on a cash settlement.
We spent a lot of money refurbishing our house a few years ago and it was a lot of stress.

I got the quote and sent it to them. They said they will not pay the vat and will only pay 50% of the quote. This is because we have not carried out the work.

Is this normal or are they trying to pull a fast one?

Many thanks 

Anthony147

They’re not pulling a fast one - Short version if you’re not repairing it, here’s an amount to settle it.

As you’re not actually fixing the issue it’s a final settlement to close the matter “compensation” in other words which they’ll either be prepared to negotiate or not.

Obviously the strength of your case is in the fact they will replace and that’s a higher cost, the weakness is that you’re prepared to live with it.

You could go back and negotiate for more but it’s likely they’ll say that’s the only offer unless you are repairing it - please ruminate on the fact that hardwood floors CAN be sectionally repaired by cutting out, fitting new blocks and colour matching which although not advertised openly is considerably cheaper (multiple county court cases defendants have used this to mitigate quantum “costs” on hardwood replacement claims) than full replacement (can be done as small as two individual blocks) which is something for you to consider as too how hard you go on negotiating.

davidmcn

If you're not fixing it then your loss is the diminution in value of your property - which is almost certainly quite a bit less than the cost of getting somebody in to fix it.