10 years old is past it

On the way home today some bloke swerves to avoid a car pulling out. Only
I'm in the right hand lane and he hits the back quarter of the ovlov. No
real speed or anything, back door pushed in a bit and paint scraped on the
door and rear wheel arch.

Get home, rings the insurers ( Swinton through MMA Insurance). Give them
the details. Anyway, Ovlov is 10 years 6 months old. "Oh, its over 10
years old sir" We write those off!

FFS, its probably £500 worth of work. to make mint again.

Anyway, anyone got experience of buying back? They did mention talking to
the insurer about "roadworthy writeoff" ( I assume they mean CAT D). There
is a good 100K+ left in the old girl and with the LPG conversion its cheap
to run.

Ian

 

Try and hang on to it, don't let them ship it anywhere or you may lose
it, that's what happened with my bike. Saying which I've been involved
in two buy backs of cars.

The first was classed as a CAT D and just resulted in me asking the
insurers for it and agreeing it was worth IIRC £1. They then sent a
cheque for the value less the £1 and a letter to that effect. The
other was initially classed as a CAT B because the damage was more
than the value of the car[1], actually nearly twice[2]. After a bit of
arguing they agreed to reduce the write off to a CAT C and advised
that they would inform DVLA and a VIC would be required.

Car was repaired for £175ish, and two years on there's been no request
for a VIC. It's had two MOT since and obviously two lots of tax, given
up phoning to ask if it's on the register now.[3]


[1] I think this was their interpretation because it doesn't seem to
match the ones I could find.
[2] Car valued at £500, repairs £750. Although the sods only paid £375
in the end.
[3] Apparently you have to ask if a VIC is required as they don't
inform the keeper. It's a surprise next time you want tax.

 

I'm not planning on letting them near it untill its all been discussed. I
have a private plate on it that I want off as well

I hope that's something like what will happen as I quite like the old bus.

At least I hadn't had those new Koni Shocks and Eibach springs fitted I
was thinking of before Xmas.

Ian

 

When I got punted off one of my MZs it was written off - I bought it back
for scrapvalue of £50 or so and fixed it for less. Just make sure they
know you want it.

 

Have an off the record chat with the 3rd party. He/she may be willing to
give you a wad of cash to save the claim being processed. His/her excess
may be more than the cost of the repair anyway, plus the inevitable premium
hike. You might even be able to negotiate a small profit...

 

So get an offer from the guy who clouted you. If you can't do that, do a
"rustproofing" job on any scratches to stop the rot before it starts and
shove the dent out of the door from the inside (or get another from a
scrapper).

If the car's good for another 100K, it's worth spending the 500 quid on
anyway.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

Load of bollocks. I used to work in an assessors and it goes like this:

He drove into you. Presumably he's admitted liability. If not, you've fucked
up because you need to be claiming off HIS insurance, not your own.

Write offs were always worked out as thus: Does the repair come to more than
72% (ish, depends on the insurer) of the Glass' price for the car? If so,
write it off, because we always try to offer 72%ish of the book price to the
poor bastard owner.

In the case of an accident like yours, what you can do is get some claims
management bastards on the case - normally this is either free or costs a
tenner for insurance in case they can't claim costs back off the third
party. At the very least, even in the event of a write off, you'll get
proper book price. We used to process Helphire's stuff, and their repairs
were always done properly and people got the proper price for their cars.
However, if you drive a Merc, they'll get you a Merc hire car, and obviously
you don't want them getting you a brand new S70 hire car whilst your Volvo's
in the garage because this will very quickly rack up and write the car off.
However, these firms do save you having to scream and shout down the phone
at some poor **** to get the proper price for your car.

In the event that the car's written off, you want to be getting a "cash in
lieu [of repairs]" settlement. IIRC that way the car's not recorded as a
total loss (because it's still completely roadworthy), and you get the value
of the car to spend on repairs. Roadworthy writeoff sounds like another term
for cash in lieu.

The LPG conversion is very unlikely to be covered - like most modifications,
they agree to insure you to drive the car with the modifications, but not
actually insure the modifications. You crash your car with Carlos Fandango
wheels and bend a couple of them, you'll only get bog standard
manufacturer's alloys to replace.

The fact is that it's fairly likely your car is uneconomical to repair if
you go down the normal bodyshop and hire car route (guessing the car's worth
£900 or so, and bearing in mind they'll need to use a new door skin at the
least, if not a new frame, and paint a fair bit of the car to blend it all
in, and give you a hire car for the best part of a week). What I'd do is go
for cash in lieu, get a second hand door and maybe a smart repair / bodyshop
job on the rear quarter / arch area. I'd also get in touch with someone in
the trade and get book price for your car. Make sure you get it including
every option the damn thing's got (people in our place were always under a
lot of pressure to get jobs rushed through, so going through the options
list wasn't often done), and have a look through autotrader to see what cars
like yours are selling for, and use this to get the assessor to give you the
right price. Ebay final value fees were never any good. I don't know about
insurance, but in some industries the threat of the ombudsman if they're
taking the piss is very useful as it costs them £500 as soon as they're
referred to them.