Insurance wrote a car off without telling me, what can I do?

C.w_Wilson

A couple of years ago I was involved in a minor accident and my car needed a new door.

insurance repaired the vehicle and gave it back to me, nothing seemed amiss.

However I was looking to trade my car in today for a new one, and the dealership informed me my car had been written off previously (cat n write off). I had no idea this was the case? I was under the impression my insurer would have to, at the very least, tell me they were writing my car off - and also that I would have a choice on weather repairs were carried out after this assessment was made?

my car is now worth less than half of what it should be as a result.

Should I contact them and query this? Or am I just missing something obvious here?

AdrianC

If they'd written it off, they wouldn't have repaired it.
They would just have paid you the value. That's what a write-off IS...

No, it's not up to you to decide whether to write-off or repair, that's purely the insurer's decision. They may offer you the chance to buy the car back and repair yourself, but they don't have to.

Are you sure the car hadn't been written off before that?

Have you done an HPI check, either now or when you bought it?

But a historic minor write-off for purely financial reasons (Cat N - non structural, the old Cat D was replaced in 2017) won't reduce the value to less than half. It'll have a minor effect, at best.

Aretnap

Indeed, your insurer would (or at least should) not have both written off the car and repaired it. There seem to be three possibilities:

(1) An administrative error; the insurer (or perhaps the DVLA) added the write-off marker to your car by mistake, in which case you would have grounds for complaint;
(2) The your car had already been written off and repaired when you bought it, assuming you bought it second hand - did you do an HPI check on it?; or
(3) You are misremembering/confused about what actually happened two years ago.

First port of call would be to ask the insurer at the time of the accident what actually happened, and whether they added the write off marker. 

C.w_Wilson

AdrianC said:

If they'd written it off, they wouldn't have repaired it.
They would just have paid you the value. That's what a write-off IS...

No, it's not up to you to decide whether to write-off or repair, that's purely the insurer's decision. They may offer you the chance to buy the car back and repair yourself, but they don't have to.

Are you sure the car hadn't been written off before that?

Have you done an HPI check, either now or when you bought it?

But a historic minor write-off for purely financial reasons (Cat N - non structural, the old Cat D was replaced in 2017) won't reduce the value to less than half. It'll have a minor effect, at best.

I bought the car from a dealership when I originally purchased it, so I assume they would have told me if it had been written off previously.

i have done a HPI check today, and can see that the vehicle has been previously written off as cat n non structural damage.

it appears my insurer has written the vehicle off, and repaired it - without telling me they were writing it off. Could this be a mistake on their part?

I was originally offered £5k trade in value, and after they carried out a hpi check, reduced that offer to £1.7k.

AdrianC

C.w_Wilson said:

AdrianC said:

If they'd written it off, they wouldn't have repaired it.
They would just have paid you the value. That's what a write-off IS...

No, it's not up to you to decide whether to write-off or repair, that's purely the insurer's decision. They may offer you the chance to buy the car back and repair yourself, but they don't have to.

Are you sure the car hadn't been written off before that?

Have you done an HPI check, either now or when you bought it?

But a historic minor write-off for purely financial reasons (Cat N - non structural, the old Cat D was replaced in 2017) won't reduce the value to less than half. It'll have a minor effect, at best.

I bought the car from a dealership when I originally purchased it, so I assume they would have told me if it had been written off previously.

Never assume.

i have done a HPI check today, and can see that the vehicle has been previously written off as cat n non structural damage.

And the date of that write-off corresponds with that of your claim?

it appears my insurer has written the vehicle off, and repaired it - without telling me they were writing it off. Could this be a mistake on their part?

It's far from impossible.

How long ago are we talking? Do you still have the paperwork?

Aretnap

C.w_Wilson said:

AdrianC said:

If they'd written it off, they wouldn't have repaired it.
They would just have paid you the value. That's what a write-off IS...

No, it's not up to you to decide whether to write-off or repair, that's purely the insurer's decision. They may offer you the chance to buy the car back and repair yourself, but they don't have to.

Are you sure the car hadn't been written off before that?

Have you done an HPI check, either now or when you bought it?

But a historic minor write-off for purely financial reasons (Cat N - non structural, the old Cat D was replaced in 2017) won't reduce the value to less than half. It'll have a minor effect, at best.

I bought the car from a dealership when I originally purchased it, so I assume they would have told me if it had been written off previously.

They certainly SHOULD have told you, whether they actually would have done is another question...

Does the HPI check record the date of the write-off? Not having bought a written off car myself I don't know these things. 

C.w_Wilson

AdrianC said:

C.w_Wilson said:

AdrianC said:

If they'd written it off, they wouldn't have repaired it.
They would just have paid you the value. That's what a write-off IS...

No, it's not up to you to decide whether to write-off or repair, that's purely the insurer's decision. They may offer you the chance to buy the car back and repair yourself, but they don't have to.

Are you sure the car hadn't been written off before that?

Have you done an HPI check, either now or when you bought it?

But a historic minor write-off for purely financial reasons (Cat N - non structural, the old Cat D was replaced in 2017) won't reduce the value to less than half. It'll have a minor effect, at best.

I bought the car from a dealership when I originally purchased it, so I assume they would have told me if it had been written off previously.

Never assume.

i have done a HPI check today, and can see that the vehicle has been previously written off as cat n non structural damage.

And the date of that write-off corresponds with that of your claim?

it appears my insurer has written the vehicle off, and repaired it - without telling me they were writing it off. Could this be a mistake on their part?

It's far from impossible.

How long ago are we talking? Do you still have the paperwork?

The accident was December 2019, still have the email chain for this.

HPI check doesn’t show a date, just the write off has occurred.

Manxman_in_exile

This is probably a stupid question (vehicle documentation and regulation is not my specialist subject) but surely something as significant as whether or not a car has been written off - and when it happened - is recorded somewhere obvious like on the V5C?  It seems daft if you can only find out via a HPI check.  Or am I being unreasonably logical in thinking that?

bengalknights

I was going to suggest checking the V5c that you currently have as that would state if it already has a salvage title.

If it doesnt then it is your insurance company that put it on and they should be contacted to rectify otherwise it was there previously.

prowla

If your car was written off by your insurer, then it was no longer your car.

A Cat N is OK to be repaired and put back on the road.

You could've arranged to buy it from the insurance company and have it repaired, but they wouldn't have paid for the repairs.

Like others say, it's either an admin error or was a pre-existing status when you bought it.

Not sure if you can still do this, but a trick to getting the status of a car is to go through the initial steps of putting it up for sale on AutoTrader.

AdrianC

Manxman_in_exile said:

This is probably a stupid question (vehicle documentation and regulation is not my specialist subject) but surely something as significant as whether or not a car has been written off - and when it happened - is recorded somewhere obvious like on the V5C?  It seems daft if you can only find out via a HPI check.  Or am I being unreasonably logical in thinking that?

Cat S/C are recorded on the V5C.

Cat N/D aren't.