car accident - help please

siocledpoeth

while stationary at lights, my car was damaged from behind. driver admitted liability at scene and his insurers have contacted me to say so too.
my passenger was hospitalized following incident.
my insurance company has been useless.
having taken my car into their named repairers for an estimate, heard nothing until phonecall from salvage company saying they were coming to pick it up.i refused until i had spoken to the insurers. i had stated from start that i wanted to keep the car. insurance company now tells me i can't - that i must bid for it at auction from the salvage company. can they do this? i can find nothing in the policy that states that they will not sell me back my car. they say that if i can get it repaired at 400.00 less than the estimate, they may agree to paying for it, but will not cover my car from then on. i have spoken to other well known companies who have never heard of such terms. this has never happened to me before so i'm a bit lost. can anyone help?
many thanks.

V_tricky

Hi,

Just out of curiousity, which insurers is it?

As his insurers have accepted liability, why not ask them to deal with it for you? As a third party claim they have no rights over your vehicle, and so they would pay you market value less the value of the salvage.

siocledpoeth

swift
can you explain more about going through the other drivers' insurance please?
thanks

V_tricky

I know it's being lazy, so apologies in advance, but HERE IS a previous post I made on making claims from insurers generally.

My best opinion is that I could ring the other persons insurer and ask them what they can do for you.

If you need any more help, let me know,




PS - That other post I linked to mentions PI which you HAVEN'T mentioned. Obviously if you haven't suffered an injury DONT CLAIM - you will only push up the price of insurance for everyone, and you MAY get caught out.

siocledpoeth

thankyou i'll have a look now- i have read in another forum about another swiftcover member being given the same line as myself about having to bid for their car at auction etc. swiftcover later allowed them to buy back their vehicle for a few hundred off the settlement price. can they treat their customers differently and get away with it? the other customer took out their policy during the same year as i did. any ideas? thanks

Silk

Hi,
Theres a lot of issues here, It depends on what category the vehicle comes under I would assume its a category D and not worth repairing for economic reasons by the insurer.
The categories are :-
Category A: Beyond repair vehicle must be crushed
Category B: vehicles body must be crushed, may be used for supplying some replacement parts
Category C: vehicle has been extensively damaged and repaired
Category Vehicle has been damaged, insurer decided not to repair

Lets say the car was worth £2000 and it would cost £2400 to repair it the insurer would write it off because its cheper to pay you the £2000
Once the Insurer has paid you the £2000 they will try and sell the damaged vehicle to recoup some of their loss by auction although they will have to pay delivery and entry fees to the auction house etc etc
A nominated repairer is cheaper for an insurer because they will require a discount from the repairer lets say in this case its £400 so either way the liability for the insurer is £2000 less the salvage.
If they think they might get £1000 for the salvage through auction less fees of say £200 it would mean the loss would stand them at £1200 total
However if you bought the car from them for £1000 they would save the £200 which would mean their total loss would be reduced to £1000 and they would usualy agree to it but from what you have said I get the impression that they might not be sure how much it is worth and feel they will get the best price through auction.
Once a car has been written off by an insurer and it has been repaired and put back on the road the value of it for obvious reasons is a lot less than that of an undamaged one and this opens a can of worms ie has the car been repaired correctly and safe etc etc. Any future claims regarding a repaired car usualy end up in arguments about market values etc and Insurers don't like them
IMO I would take the money and run and replace the car with a different one

silkyuk9

Im sure the insurance company can class the car as a write off, you will get the money that the car is worth. you can go through your insurance to buy the car back as an insurance write off. im sure you would then have to reregister the car.

if the car is repairable at a cost lower that what it is worth the insurance company should then fix it.

i have a car (fiesta) and some one damaged the rear wing, i drove the car around until the insurance man came to have a look and he said it wasnt worth repairing even though the damage wasnt that vast. i got my claim from the other persons insurance, and the car was taken from me. Insurance companies have contracts with certain salvage yards, the one that came for my car was from up north around 50 or 60 miles away. i could have gone through them and the insurance people to buy the car back and have it repaired, but its not worth the effort.

at the end of the day a car is a car to insurance companies, sentimentalities done not come into the equation.

if you get the money take it and buy another. its a shame as your car proberly was one of those cars that never went wrong, always started first time etc.

but its tough luck.

matth76

The third party's insurance should cover all the costs and you should not have to pay any excess (even though some try to!!) as you are not actually making a claim as it wasnt your fault and therefore will not pay a penny. The problem here is the third party insurance company sounds as though it is saying to repair the car is un-economical and probably more than the car is worth and therefore will pay you the market value of the car (usually much less than you will find in Glasses Guide or Parkers!) and write it off.

Same thing nearly happened to me. My car is worth around £2500-£3k but to me is worth much more - it's the old classic Golf VR6 and is very well looked after - almost show condition but of course this means nothing to an insurance company as said above. One morning it got a small dent from one of my neighbours who kindly left their contact details on my windscreen (very rare I know) and when I met with him he admitted total fault etc and it all proceeded to go through his insurance. The car initially went for an estimate at a garage approved by the insurance company and the estimate was about £2k!! They informed me it would likely be written off. I then got a local garage to provide an estimate and all the work was done for £400! And luckily I kept the car and it was back on the road. My insurance co is Elephant and they were very slow getting in touch with the third party's insurance. I had to constantly ring them every other day to remind them about my car! It was undrivable at the time and took 2 weeks before it was towed to the first garage for the estimate! It took about 6 weeks to finally get sorted. ..all for a small dent. Sorry to hear about your bad luck. Hope you get some recompense for the car and hassle!

siocledpoeth

following query, i have now been told they will sell me back my car for 300.00 from the 1,500 they offered, class it as a category D. i have found the spares for 120 and someone to fix it for 400, but they (swift) will no longer insure it.
or if i can find a quote of less than 1,000, they (swift) will repair it for me.
any views?
thanks for all your help so far, much appreciated.

siocledpoeth

can anyone advise on keeping the car when classified as a cat d by insurers. they will no longer insure it once it's back on the road.
thanks:beer: