How much of your car do you need to hand over in a write off claim?

cw8825

B0bbyEwing said:

With your opening - it's that you're supposed to tell them. Not that you have to. 

I won't die if I don't tell them. I won't go to jail. If I scrap it then nobody knows. If I sell as spares or repair then nobody knows. 

There's a lot of supposeds to in the world. Keeping it motoring we're supposed to not go beyond the speed limit but I'd argue that everyone reading this breaks it at some point. It's just whether you get caught or not. 

if your asking for people to advise you to commit fraud - then nobody will, people can give advice and then its your choice what to do.

yes you are supposed to notify insurers of all incidents but not everybody does

Now if there was an incident no other cars involved, no damage to any other property or people, if you didnt report it, how would the insurers find out?

DullGreyGuy

B0bbyEwing said:

With your opening - it's that you're supposed to tell them. Not that you have to. 

I won't die if I don't tell them. I won't go to jail. If I scrap it then nobody knows. If I sell as spares or repair then nobody knows. 

There's a lot of supposeds to in the world. Keeping it motoring we're supposed to not go beyond the speed limit but I'd argue that everyone reading this breaks it at some point. It's just whether you get caught or not. 

Failing to tell them would be breach of contract, were you not to declare it at renewal it would then become fraud. 

Unfortunately many people grass themselves in with this type of thing, many more frauds are detected via open admission from a policyholder in Motor than through the sophisticated scorecards etc.  Hence I have voided many policies and in one case leaving the customer to pay a six figure sum to the pedestrian they hit resulting in a CCJ and a charge on their home. PS. injury claims are explicitly excluded from bankruptcy.

So yes, you have to tell them. If you want to try to defraud them, as many do, thats your choice just dont expect to get friendly advice if you're caught. 

Bigphil1474

Didn't you say the car wouldn't pass an MOT, but also said you are still driving it as you have got a full tank of fuel? You do know that you can still get done if your car is unroadworthy even if you have an in date MOT certificate?

If it's a banger and you're not expecting much, it's probably easier scrapping yourself than claiming on your own policy and probable price increases going forward, especially if your excess is high.

tifo

if written off and going to a breakers most don't mind if you take small items out but they might not let you take off alloys etc as they can sell them, so if you're scrapping it ask them first.

lots of insurers have contract salvage rate agreements so the breakers will pay the same amount for a range of vehicles hence to them it doesn't matter if you take off the odd item.

DullGreyGuy

tifo said:

lots of insurers have contract salvage rate agreements so the breakers will receive the same amount of money for a range of cars hence to them it doesn't matter if you take off the odd item.

The breakers pay the money not receive it @tifo, as you say its normally a fixed percentage of the settlement value to make things simple for everyone so if we assume its 20% and the insurer paid an extra £300 total loss because of the alloys then the breaker will have paid an extra £60 because of the alloys so wouldnt be too chuffed if it turned up without alloys. 

tifo

DullGreyGuy said:

tifo said:

lots of insurers have contract salvage rate agreements so the breakers will receive the same amount of money for a range of cars hence to them it doesn't matter if you take off the odd item.

The breakers pay the money not receive it @tifo, as you say its normally a fixed percentage of the settlement value to make things simple for everyone so if we assume its 20% and the insurer paid an extra £300 total loss because of the alloys then the breaker will have paid an extra £60 because of the alloys so wouldnt be too chuffed if it turned up without alloys. 

Sorry, mistype, the breakers pay the same rate for a range of vehicles.

I mentioned the alloys and contract salvage because I have experience of those. But i did take out small items from a vehicle (2 different write offs in the family) and the breakers said OK, they even took out the items and posted them to me! But the same breaker would not let me take off the alloys i'd fitted a week before even though i said i'd put the original alloys back on. Both sets were mint as the car was new and only 2 weeks out of dealer then my daughter wrote it off after changing to bigger sportier alloys (in her opinion they were better but that wasn't why it was written off). The original ones were audi sport. Ouch! This car we let them take.

With another write off the salvage value was around £1,900 according to our engineer report but the insurer still deducted their £3,000 contract salvage rate as we kept the car. We didn't agree but they deducted £3,000 and paid the rest to the account anyway and closed the claim.

DullGreyGuy

tifo said:
With another write off the salvage value was around £1,900 according to our engineer report but the insurer still deducted their £3,000 contract salvage rate as we kept the car. We didn't agree but they deducted £3,000 and paid the rest to the account anyway and closed the claim.

As you say, it's normally a fixed percentage. In practice that means dealers overpay on some items and under pay on others but insurers like simplicity and getting 20% on everything is better than spending 3-10 hours on every claim negotiating what the salvage is worth on this particular vehicle based on the vehicle, its damage etc. 

B0bbyEwing

cw8825 said:

B0bbyEwing said:

With your opening - it's that you're supposed to tell them. Not that you have to. 

I won't die if I don't tell them. I won't go to jail. If I scrap it then nobody knows. If I sell as spares or repair then nobody knows. 

There's a lot of supposeds to in the world. Keeping it motoring we're supposed to not go beyond the speed limit but I'd argue that everyone reading this breaks it at some point. It's just whether you get caught or not. 

if your asking for people to advise you to commit fraud - then nobody will, people can give advice and then its your choice what to do.

yes you are supposed to notify insurers of all incidents but not everybody does

Now if there was an incident no other cars involved, no damage to any other property or people, if you didnt report it, how would the insurers find out?

How is "how much of your car do you need to hand over in a write off claim" asking people to advise me to commit fraud?

If YOU want to delve deeper & know the ins and outs then ok but I was simply asking if I can take bits off the car to then sell on without it impacting on the claim. The answer to this question would be yes/no and I'd proceed from there. 
I could of course phone the insurance & ask them as a general enquiry but they may or may not then mark the policy, so at this point in time it's better to ask others who may be more in the know than I.

DullGreyGuy

B0bbyEwing said:

cw8825 said:

B0bbyEwing said:

With your opening - it's that you're supposed to tell them. Not that you have to. 

I won't die if I don't tell them. I won't go to jail. If I scrap it then nobody knows. If I sell as spares or repair then nobody knows. 

There's a lot of supposeds to in the world. Keeping it motoring we're supposed to not go beyond the speed limit but I'd argue that everyone reading this breaks it at some point. It's just whether you get caught or not. 

if your asking for people to advise you to commit fraud - then nobody will, people can give advice and then its your choice what to do.

yes you are supposed to notify insurers of all incidents but not everybody does

Now if there was an incident no other cars involved, no damage to any other property or people, if you didnt report it, how would the insurers find out?

How is "how much of your car do you need to hand over in a write off claim" asking people to advise me to commit fraud?

If YOU want to delve deeper & know the ins and outs then ok but I was simply asking if I can take bits off the car to then sell on without it impacting on the claim. The answer to this question would be yes/no and I'd proceed from there. 
I could of course phone the insurance & ask them as a general enquiry but they may or may not then mark the policy, so at this point in time it's better to ask others who may be more in the know than I.

Because if someone inspects your car and says it's worth £5,000 and you accept that then they own the whole car. To give them anything but the whole car would be fraud. 

I mean, I am sure you wouldnt be happy going to look at a new car, taking it for a test drive, agreeing a price and for them to deliver the car to you. Then when the car turns up they've taken off the wheels and taken out the seats would you?

In practice most arent going to care about minor things but the suggestion of taking alloys or spare wheels are not minor. If you ask and they say it's ok, or you tell them before they value it that these things will be removed then it's fine. To get it valued with its alloys and then remove them before surrendering the vehicle hoping you won't be caught is fraud. 

B0bbyEwing

DullGreyGuy said:

B0bbyEwing said:

cw8825 said:

B0bbyEwing said:

With your opening - it's that you're supposed to tell them. Not that you have to. 

I won't die if I don't tell them. I won't go to jail. If I scrap it then nobody knows. If I sell as spares or repair then nobody knows. 

There's a lot of supposeds to in the world. Keeping it motoring we're supposed to not go beyond the speed limit but I'd argue that everyone reading this breaks it at some point. It's just whether you get caught or not. 

if your asking for people to advise you to commit fraud - then nobody will, people can give advice and then its your choice what to do.

yes you are supposed to notify insurers of all incidents but not everybody does

Now if there was an incident no other cars involved, no damage to any other property or people, if you didnt report it, how would the insurers find out?

How is "how much of your car do you need to hand over in a write off claim" asking people to advise me to commit fraud?

If YOU want to delve deeper & know the ins and outs then ok but I was simply asking if I can take bits off the car to then sell on without it impacting on the claim. The answer to this question would be yes/no and I'd proceed from there. 
I could of course phone the insurance & ask them as a general enquiry but they may or may not then mark the policy, so at this point in time it's better to ask others who may be more in the know than I.

Because if someone inspects your car and says it's worth £5,000 and you accept that then they own the whole car. To give them anything but the whole car would be fraud. 

I mean, I am sure you wouldnt be happy going to look at a new car, taking it for a test drive, agreeing a price and for them to deliver the car to you. Then when the car turns up they've taken off the wheels and taken out the seats would you?

In practice most arent going to care about minor things but the suggestion of taking alloys or spare wheels are not minor. If you ask and they say it's ok, or you tell them before they value it that these things will be removed then it's fine. To get it valued with its alloys and then remove them before surrendering the vehicle hoping you won't be caught is fraud. 

You're talking about the scenario where someone looks over the car, values it & THEN I start altering it.

I was talking about taking some bits off before contacting the insurance. 

Different scenarios.

As said, I was also just generally asking so that I can make a decision based on the response. As it turns out, I'll not be doing that.

I also found through talking to others 'IRL' that through lack of experience in this area I just had the wrong idea about how it worked anyway. I assumed they'd value the car as it stands, which is basically scrap value now. I was told that it doesn't work like that & instead they'd value it as it would be on the market in working order. I'm told they'd take the car that it is, trim level, approx mileage etc & then see what it approximately sells for (what sites or database they use I don't know). 
I bought my car in 2017/2018 for about £1700. Looking at what they were selling for pre-accident then I could get in the region of £1,500-£2,000 (depending on how greedy the seller seemed to be). This is crazy to me since it's now 7-8yrs older & has obviously done a lot more miles but I guess that's the way it is. Anyway, I'm told, correctly or incorrectly, that if that's what they're selling at today then that's roughly what the insurance would pay me for it.

Which if so then I'd be going through the insurance. Saves a lot of hassle. I've until the end of the month (tax refund) or until I hit the light on the fuel, whichever comes first.