So, my car was rammed in February, and it's still in the garage. I was on a main road and a gap yah in a mini hit pulled out into my front left wheel, pretty hard. To cut a mega saga short, the 3rd party's insurance assessor looked at my car, took it for a test drive etc (I was not present but he did it over the phone to me). It had to be recovered to a garage as I was very sure the steering was totally wrong after the impact. This guy was adamant that it was "fine, just some exterior damage, paint scratched, wheel scuffed" and issued a cheque for £550. At this point, 3 engineers have looked at it. First from my insurers, then an independent one, then the 3rd party's. They said they did a steering check and all's fine, etc. I declined the cheque and insisted that they repair it for me at one of their approved garages near home. I asked for a steering geometry check, suspension So I got a call from the garage, they can't do a geometry check as the track rod ends have seized, so need new track rods (coming friday) before they can check it and get any more repairs authorised. And according to the mechanic, there's damage to the steering and suspension, and the cost is likely to cause a write off. I have to wait til they do the geometry check on friday, to hear what the 3rd party's insurers say about the cost. So...£550!? That was bullsh!t! It was a Defender 90, modified for deep water wading to get to our house in the floods, so kinda important to us and worth >>£550!
The £550 was the cost to repair the damage, not the value of the vehicle. But apart from that I wouldn't be at all surprised if 90% of people in your situation wouldn't take the £550 thereby saving the insurance company many £££, keep pushing it and you'll probably get a better offer. Do you know a mechanic that's familiar with Defender 90s ? If you do you might try taking him along with you and getting him to look at it with their mechanic. Even if you're competent with the mechanics of it they're less likely to try and give him the run around. Moriquendi
Had a similar situation when I wrote off my Volvo S40 last year. The volvo dealership/garage here told me "112k (approximately 10K GBP) excluding body panels, mechanical only". To give you an idea, the car was worth ~125k in local currency at the time, and the insurance has a policy that states a vehicle is written off the moment damage exceeds 70% of the vehicle's value. The Garage quoted for basically everything under the hood: new engine, new A/C compressor, new Engine mountings (this is part of Volvo standard engine replacement procedures), new piping all around, etc. When the insurance assessor FINALLY looked at the vehicle, I got told that (and I quote): "The damage isn't that bad. Novel (the only Volvo dealership in the country) don't know what they're talking about. My quote is 92K including Body panels." The assessor then proceeded to take 5 days(!!!) to get that quote to the insurance, refused my request to see that quote (in order to make sure that this quote is for genuine parts at an authorised dealer/mechanic), and stated that "the aircon was broken before the time". I eventually got it sorted by filing a formal complaint against the assessor, running to the top level of management at the insurance company, getting affidavits signed by witnesses (the missus, who was in the car at the time of the accident) to state that the Aircon WAS working at time of the accident, mentioning the assessor's refusal to show me the quotation, thereby fuelling distrust, as the only Volvo dealership in the country had quoted substantially more, and my unwillingness to accept anyone but said dealership to repair my car. It was a 6 week fight with Emails flying around every single day, and the issue only got resolved when I actually walked in to the building and demanded to speak to management NOW.
Only hassle I had was waiting for the assessor to assess the damage. He was in the area only two days a week and the day they'd booked him in, he was actually on holiday! Still, only took about a week more than it should've as a replacement headlight kept turning up broken (took 3 new ones to get a complete, unbroken one).
Insurance companies are basically scummy, unhelpful, "jobs for the lads", expensive wastes of spaces that can only just about manage to take your money. Ask them to do anything related to a claim and you will have trouble.
Yeah, sorry, the £550 was issued for the repairs, which the cheery assessor was very sure were unbending/painting. It was like something out of a tv show, he didn't let me answer questions, just, "ok so the steerings a bit wobbly, nothing more than a car this age, a bit of scuffing on the wheels / body work, sounds and feels fine. But what about the pulling to the left? Oh it's not doing that now! Right.
er why have you had 3 engineers look at it. if your comprehensive then your insurer would appoint their engineer OR an independent one not both, a third party insurer if they were dealing with your claim (instead of your own) they would do the same. one engineer to assess and either write off the car or authorise repairs. didn't the garage assess the damage and prepare a quote prior to an engineer inspecting it? Nedsbeds - you've obviously been shafted by them in the past....................cheapest is not always the best!
The scary thing is, imagine if you lived in the US and your healthcare and what treatments you got was decided by insurance companies. Now thats scary ****.
Well, to be fair, the cheapest insurance company I was ever with were by far and away the best I've dealt with! And there is no other industry where "you get what you pay for" is less apt. (unless you are some sort of sadist, and then lies, insults, dodgy dealings, losing money and years worth of incompetence are your sort of thing )
Works the other way round too... the assessment wasn't in yet, but the insurance company told the garage to "start the repairs" on Friday, so they wouldn't have to pay for the loaner for so long. On monday the assessment came in stating that the car was a total loss. The repair cost about 120% of what the car was worth...and they paid it
3 engineers - 1 from my insruance company (who then decided to void the insurance as I had a 2nd fuel tank installed), 1 independent guy from the garage, who decided the 1st price; the 3rd guy was from the 3rd party's insurers who decided the lower 2nd price; the garage's just finished repairing it - for a much higher price than the 3 engineer's quoted (engineer's didn't pick up the internal damage to the steering, visible once the garage dismanlted a few bits). Anyway, the garage just finished it today @ 4.45, so I now can't get it til tuesday This has been an epic experience!
My insurance saga Ok, so I'm gonna get my car back this week I've spent maybe 6hours total on internet / phone with these companies. You end up going in circles, they just keep "recommending" each other, then put you through, can't wait for the phone bill. Then inevitably they say "no" or give a massive price for something - modifications, insurance voided, 1 year NCB, age 20 (ok I suppose it does look pretty bad like that - I added a 2nd fuel tank, which wasn't declared, so it got voided and I was 2 months from 3yrs NCB ). Admiral phoned me up saying they saw I did an online quote with them through some comparison site, first thing I said was "if I've been voided by your sister company Bell, and they said I can't get insurance with EUI again, can I get insurance with you then", "oh yes yes sir absolutely", get to the end of the call, "have you ever been declined insurance", "um yeah, by bell","oh sorry sir you can't have insurance with us". Finally came across "performance direct", who were good on several levels: clear english phone line, sales person really knew what he was talking about and tried loads of quotes changing things to find a lower price, then dropped the price to lower than ANYTHING online for some reason. I have to stop the insurance in ~3 months, so he tried all the options of this to see what the cheapest would be too. Had no problems with the mods / insurance declined either. Only condition is that I have to install a car tracker. It's an off-roadified Defender running on waste oil So conclusion, anything out of the ordinary, use "Performance Direct" and avoid EUI (Bell / admiral / elephant / etc). Even Adrian Flux / "4x4 specialists" wouldn't do me (age).