Well finally after 2 months the insurance company has wrote back and told me my beloved Z is to be a write off and have offered me £4570 minus the £550 excess. Is this a good price because they sent me the cheque straight away without even agreeing it with me.

Would really love to withdraw it and fix myself but haven't really got time, and also they won't even let me buy it back from them, it will go to auction, is this right? I want it back, I miss it.

 

:cry:

thy cant force an amount on you, jus dnt cash th chequ or thyl take that as agreement, th claim isnt settled til u say it is, always dispute their offer cos insurance companies offer you less to start with, thats the nature of their business

You'll get book price, that seems about right, you can try telling them to stick the cheque but usually they will say that that is their final offer.

Have a look around at what they are selling for (not asking for). £4K seems to be a good offer. You can argue the toss over new cam belts, shocks etc... but in the end without them the car would be worthless - so new bits are in the insurers eyes minor.

 

You certainly can dispute their offer but remember they can also reduce it (as well as increase it) and will also spend a month or two making up their minds. If you need wheels quicker than April/May it might be worth accepting a fair offer.

If this was an official club we could use it to get valuations of cars. My friend who had a Lancia written off got a letter from a Lancia club stating what they said the car is worth. It worked

Before you enter into negotiations over the value, have you banked the cheque?

 

Many insurers end their letters with sentences like

 

".........the presentation of the enclosed cheque at our bank indicates acceptance of our offer in full and final settlement........"

 

Otherwise, you may as well decline their offer as the insurers sometimes expect you to negotiate.

 

Good luck

 

Richard :)

i had a car written off once, it was an Audi 80 sport which was immaculate, i phoned them up & haggled which got me an extra few hundred quid.

 

many insurance companies now dont allow you to buy the cars back, once the ins co have paid you its their car, they often have deals with auction/scrappies & they go straight to them.

No i haven't cashed cheque yet, just in middle of taking all mods off it to try and get some of the thousands I spent back, or maybe i'll keep them for my next project.

Watch out that their assesor has not seen the mods otherwise they might consider it theft. i.e They insureed a car with X on it and now it doesn't have it.

I'm going through insurance damage at the mo, spoke to a bloke who said collect adverts with pictures of 300's with the same sort of spec then send that to your insurance company if your not happy with the price, he also said, im not sure if its true that you have 3 goes to agree on a price

I rejected an offer on a write-off once and entered a long battle with the insurers over the value. In the end I sent adds from Autotrader which I had rung to confirm the cars had been sold etc. I convinced them they were well out with the real value and got an extra £1200!

 

It's worth the effort!