Insurance low balling on total loss for non fault claim

drsquirrel

I've finally got a "decision" from the FOS, although they opened it to further comments.

They have decided that the expert valuation is valid, and this is from my own insurance company not the offending party. I went back and gave them some examples, examples that are clearly worse (more damage, scrapes etc, not great MOT history, lack of the odd luxury like leather seats etc) and yet they have come back saying this would be "betterment".

I have the insurance number of the other party (they hit and run) as I paid for it (insurance company/policy number). Is it possible for me to chase them?

Could I just be reasonable in my replacement and chase them for the value in small claims? (at this point I presume their insurance would provide their representation) or is there conditions on this stuff that it has to go through the insurance companies?

[Deleted User]

Have you tried offering some of the sellers of similar cars the settlement figure?

They expect you to haggle down, rather than pay the price on the website.

Condition wise they will expect wear and tear. You should get a warranty from a dealer to cover reliability. If it has had MOT work then as far as they are concerned it's repaired and no more likely to fail now than your old car.

It's a bit late to be going to the third party now. They have probably already settled with your insurer. Your insurer has costs (admin etc) so you can't just close the claim and pursue it yourself now.

Have you considered getting a different car? What's so special about this one?

drsquirrel

[Deleted User] said:

Have you tried offering some of the sellers of similar cars the settlement figure?

They expect you to haggle down, rather than pay the price on the website.

Condition wise they will expect wear and tear. You should get a warranty from a dealer to cover reliability. If it has had MOT work then as far as they are concerned it's repaired and no more likely to fail now than your old car.

It's a bit late to be going to the third party now. They have probably already settled with your insurer. Your insurer has costs (admin etc) so you can't just close the claim and pursue it yourself now.

Have you considered getting a different car? What's so special about this one?

They're not offering me the excess back yet, they would do this if they have/had settled with the other company?

Already taken into account the condition and my examples are some of the lowest I can find, point being to say its unreasonable.

I should try, the value isn't much, 2-3k. Listings are almost always private sale and im not going to offer 1k on something listed for closer to 3k (and thats starting low to high basically, scraping the barrel)... people complain about getting stupid offers on items they're selling, im not going to be one of them.

Full time AWD, Auto estate and not stupid VED bracket. I've almost always owned the same over the years even when replacing them. I thing the alternatives would cost more anyway.

Sandtree

drsquirrel said:

[Deleted User] said:

Have you tried offering some of the sellers of similar cars the settlement figure?

They expect you to haggle down, rather than pay the price on the website.

Condition wise they will expect wear and tear. You should get a warranty from a dealer to cover reliability. If it has had MOT work then as far as they are concerned it's repaired and no more likely to fail now than your old car.

It's a bit late to be going to the third party now. They have probably already settled with your insurer. Your insurer has costs (admin etc) so you can't just close the claim and pursue it yourself now.

Have you considered getting a different car? What's so special about this one?

They're not offering me the excess back yet, they would do this if they have/had settled with the other company?

Already taken into account the condition and my examples are some of the lowest I can find, point being to say its unreasonable.

I should try, the value isn't much, 2-3k. Listings are almost always private sale and im not going to offer 1k on something listed for closer to 3k (and thats starting low to high basically, scraping the barrel)... people complain about getting stupid offers on items they're selling, im not going to be one of them.

Full time AWD, Auto estate and not stupid VED bracket. I've almost always owned the same over the years even when replacing them. I thing the alternatives would cost more anyway.

They won't talk about your excess until someone has asked them to reimburse it (and if its asked at the wrong time (ie too early) it can well be forgotten about later). 

Sounds like its an adjudicator or investigator that has given their decision so far in which case you can reject their decision and ask for it to be passed to an ombudsman for a final decision. Generally speaking the ombudsman is more generous than your other options and so if they conclude it is a reasonable value anything else is going to be high risk (ie going to court)

drsquirrel

Sandtree said:

They won't talk about your excess until someone has asked them to reimburse it (and if its asked at the wrong time (ie too early) it can well be forgotten about later). 

Sounds like its an adjudicator or investigator that has given their decision so far in which case you can reject their decision and ask for it to be passed to an ombudsman for a final decision. Generally speaking the ombudsman is more generous than your other options and so if they conclude it is a reasonable value anything else is going to be high risk (ie going to court)

The above has come from the ombudsman.

Sandtree

drsquirrel said:

Sandtree said:

They won't talk about your excess until someone has asked them to reimburse it (and if its asked at the wrong time (ie too early) it can well be forgotten about later). 

Sounds like its an adjudicator or investigator that has given their decision so far in which case you can reject their decision and ask for it to be passed to an ombudsman for a final decision. Generally speaking the ombudsman is more generous than your other options and so if they conclude it is a reasonable value anything else is going to be high risk (ie going to court)

The above has come from the ombudsman.

THE Ombudsman or AN ombudsman? 

People refer to the Financial Ombudsman as "the ombudsman" but "ombudsman" is a job title within the organisation, they only consider complaints where the company or customer have rejected the initial decision and their decisions are binding on the financial organisation if the customer accepts it. 

If you or the company rejected the adjudicator/investigator's decision and its already been escalated to an ombudsman who also didnt uphold your complaint then that process is exhausted and the courts remain your next step against your insurers but they are rarely more generous than the ombudsman.

drsquirrel

Made me wonder then, but it is the proper FOS (@cases.financial-ombudsman.org.uk)

I am just agast at how badly they have gone with this as its 1/4-1/3 of any reasonable costs to get back to the same.

This is why I had asked about the shortfall against the other driver themselves. I was thikning of going ahead and just purchasing a replacement and logging costs of travel and such then claiming for a real value.

[Deleted User]

Can you post the ombudsman's decision letter?

drsquirrel

I haven't been provided a letter yet, they've given me their "decision" via email, with a deadline to provide further information. I replied to the initial one with examples of the worst case examples of replacement (nowhere near betterment) but they came back saying it would be. I have another email with 2 weeks.

This is a quote from the last email

I appreciate your comments regarding inevitable aging of your car but that you feel the business haven’t taken into account what’s on the market at the moment. Whilst I appreciate the concern you have, as explained in my view – we don’t deem advertisements a necessary reflection of the value of the car. Our approach is to rely on expert engineer reports because adverts fluctuate based on how quickly a seller might want to sell, how valuable they personally deem their vehicle, allowances to negotiate and so forth.

Therefore, we would consider it betterment if a consumer was awarded more than what the expert engineer deemed the car’s settlement value at. And betterment lies outside of our rules. Unfortunately, my opinion of the settlement value remains the same.

They have not told me who this expert is yet. As far as I can tell the last person to value the car is someone that works for my insurance company, which is obviously who I disagree with. I have taken into account the "scrapes" and such on bumpers - and all of the adverts I found had such marks or worse. They're basically offering 1k, when 2.5k is the cheapest (400 mile round trip and not a perfect match, rusted subframe and other oil leaks apparently - which mine doesn't have any of). A replacement without scrapes and such are listed for over 4k. I found one that had various problems (wouldnt start on key, EML lights on, MOT failure basically), for 1.8k. Even with some hard negotiation all of these wouldn't get anywhere near the 1k. I obviously have concerns with travel costs/time as well.

[Deleted User]

The problem is that people want silly money for used cars at the moment. It's going to be very hard to challenge. You could get your own expert, but it will cost you.