Motor legal protection

Red_Fox_2

Husband has been involved in a no fault accident - somebody drove into the back of his car. His car is likely to be a write off with a settlement pay out of around £5-6000.
Clearly this will not cover the cost of buying another car  Would motor legal protection cover the difference as an uninsured loss and if not why not?

Keep_pedalling

That is not what legal protection is for. Surely the lay out will allow him to by a replacement car with a similar value to the value of the one being written off. You don’t compensated to buy a newer more expensive replacement.

Aretnap

MLP doesn't cover uninsured losses as such, it provides legal assistance should you wish to claim uninsured losses from the other driver (or his insurer), through the courts if necessary.

Your insurance company's write-off settlement should be enough to buy a second hand replacement car of the same type, age and condition as the one that was damaged. Why do you think that it won't? If it's not enough then you need to complain to your insurer as the first port of call, and if you are still not happy then you can complain to the Financial Ombudsman

You are very unlikely to get a better settlement from the third party insurer than for your own insurer - they are still only liable for the market value of your car at the time of the accident, and they are not bound by the Financial Ombudsman rules which say that your own insurer should consider the dealer price of a second hand car rather than the private sail price.

Obviously if by not covering the cost of another car you mean that your husband wants to take the opportunity to upgrade to a car which is newer/bigger/more expensive/faster than the one that was written off neither his industry not the third party is responsible for the extra costs that he incurs - so that wouldn't be something that could be claimed from either insurer.

MyRealNameToo

Red_Fox_2 said:

Husband has been involved in a no fault accident - somebody drove into the back of his car. His car is likely to be a write off with a settlement pay out of around £5-6000.
Clearly this will not cover the cost of buying another car  Would motor legal protection cover the difference as an uninsured loss and if not why not?

The payout is presumably net of the excess and so yes the LE cover will assist you in recovering the excess but if you think even with the excess added back on its still a shortfall then thats a complaint to your insurers and not something that LE cover would consider as its an insured loss not an uninsured one.

The one exception would be if you had a guaranteed value policy (ie it pays out a fixed amount) and you can substantiate that the vehicle was worth more then that is an uninsured loss and so LE cover could respond. It would however be odd to buy a guaranteed value policy below the actual value of the vehicle 

user1977

Red_Fox_2 said:

a settlement pay out of around £5-6000.
Clearly this will not cover the cost of buying another car  

Nothing clear to me about that!

Red_Fox_2

Yes £5-6000 would buy a new car if husband wanted to buy a small 15 year old car with mileage of around 100,000. His car is 8 years old with 24000 miles on the clock with a full service history and the model is no longer made. He does not expect to buy a new car just one of equivalent age, milage, size etc. Is that unreasonable?

Isthisforreal99

And has £5-£6k actually been offered - you say 'likely'.

The offer should be the market value of his 8yo car. Any on Autotrader etc? Bear in mind Autotrader will be asking price not selling price.

And you absolutely would not pay £5-6k for a 15 yo car with 100,000 miles on it.

MyRealNameToo

Red_Fox_2 said:

Yes £5-6000 would buy a new car if husband wanted to buy a small 15 year old car with mileage of around 100,000. His car is 8 years old with 24000 miles on the clock with a full service history and the model is no longer made. He does not expect to buy a new car just one of equivalent age, milage, size etc. Is that unreasonable?

They should be paying you enough such that if you add your own money to cover the excess you would be able to buy the identical vehicle. They use the likes of the Glass guide, which is made for the motor industry but also used by finance companies and insurers, which are based on actual sales of vehicles. 

As mentioned above, auto trader lists asking prices not selling prices and they will allow you to put whatever number the advertiser wants against the car so many are unrealistically priced and many are optimistically priced with the knowledge that the buyer will negotiate a discount. 

QrizB

Red_Fox_2 said:

Yes £5-6000 would buy a new car if husband wanted to buy a small 15 year old car with mileage of around 100,000. 

£6000 would buy you three or four of those cars.

Red_Fox_2 said:

His car is 8 years old with 24000 miles on the clock with a full service history 

There are literally hundreds of 2017 or newer cars on AutoTrader with less than 40k miles for under £6k.

Red_Fox_2 said:

... and the model is no longer made. He does not expect to buy a new car just one of equivalent age, milage, size etc.

What make and model is/was his car?

Red_Fox_2

Have found 3 cars on line of the same make, model, year and similar mileage within 50 miles  All are about £2500- 3000 more than what we initially expect to be offered as a settlement pay out. 
I can see some negotiation coming both with the insurers and the seller.

Aretnap

When you say you "expect to be offered...", is that based on anything the insurance company has actually said, or just a gut feeling?

See what they actually offer. You might be pleasantly surprised.

If you're not happy with their offer, see here for the Financial Ombudsman's guidance on how they should be calculating the value. As above the trade guides will carry more weight than adverts on Auto-Trader, since the trade guides are based on actual selling prices. However the FOS is apparently more willing to consider advertised prices than they used to be, so it is worth looking at them. One thing to be aware of is that I believe that the guides and the FOS look at national rather than local prices, so if you're in London or another area where things tend to be more expensive you may need to cast the net wider than 50 miles to get a realistic impression of national prices.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-can-help/insurance/motor-insurance/vehicle-valuations-write-offs