# Questions re Motor Insurance Claim Dispute



## Chugh (12 Apr 2007)

Hi,

Just a few questions about where we stand re our insurance claim. Brief overview:
Car stolen on Fri 23rd March, crashed and recovered same evening. Claim made on the following Monday. Insurance co. allow €300 for rental car so car was rented. After repeatedly calls to the insurance co, car was declared a write-off 10 days later. More calls made to insurance co. to get an offer figure. Eventually offer made - two weeks and 1 day after claim made and rental car has been returned in the meantime. Offer made of €8,750 including salvage and rejected immediately. Car was insured 18 months ago for €17,000 and lowest price online found for current market value was €15,900. There is plenty of salvage in the car and parts are quite specialist but I have no idea of what that's worth.

Q. Are there any regulations on how long your insurance co. takes to make you an initial offer (I mean can they take as long as they want while you are without a car)?
Q. Is the insurance co. responsible for the salvage of the car or are you allowed choose salvage company? What rights do you have over your car while a claim is being made?
Q. Do you have any right to demand your own assessor for the car?

Any help greatly appreciated - policy book is quite vague (policy does state 'market value' for valuing write-offs) and can't find much online re legal stance or rights.


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## jhegarty (12 Apr 2007)

What the make / model / millage ?


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## Chugh (12 Apr 2007)

Mercedes SLK 230 Kompressor 1997
Mileage 60,000
Thanks.


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## Ravima (12 Apr 2007)

an offer was made. it may take some time to confirm that your policy applies. they migth want to check with gardai to see if matter was reported to them BEFORE or AFTER the car was located. This can colour the claim a certain way, especially if reported AFTER the car is recovered. 

Why did it take 10 days for assessor to see car? If matter was reported on the Monday, I would have expected assessor to see car within 48 hours. 

Offer was made 5 days after assessor saw car. This seems a bit long again. Is there a broker involved and wer figures given to broker for onward transmission to you, thus causing at least 1 days delay if broker was to write rather than phone you.

Your mention of offer of €8750 including salvage is a bit unclear. Are you getting €8750 and you retain salvage? If that is the case, assessor should be able to get you a salvage figure and a buyer. Does the figure mentioned for salvage and the €8750 come close to your figure of €15900? the fact that you have it insure for more than that is irrelevant as you could have it insured for €50m, but you will still only recover the market value. 

You also mention that some parts are specialist - does this mean that you have it customised somewhat? if so, whilst it might be more valuble to you in that it cost you money to put on these gizmos, they do not necessarily increase the value of the car.

You can of course have  your own assessor see car and put his figures to yoru insurers. there is a dispute resolution service with all insurers - check your policy booklet for the procedure with your insurers.


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## Chugh (12 Apr 2007)

Hi, thanks for reply.

Firstly, the car was reported AFTER it was recovered. The car was stolen, crashed and recovered in the same night - a Friday, so the claim was made first thing on the Monday morning.

We did not use a broker - only dealt directly with the insurance co. Just got the complete runaround. I've lost count of how many different people we spoke to because everyone else was constantly unavailable, and each time we spoke to someone they would promise to get back to us with the info we were looking for only to call back to say that they couldn't find info and would get back tomorrow.....

The offer figure of €8,750 (apologies for being unclear) was the TOTAL price they were offering us - they were selling it for salvage themselves and adding the insurance payout figure to the salvage figure to get a total of €8,750!!!

They were unable to break down for me what part of the €8,750 was salvage and what was insurance as this was not specified in the engineer's report - this, the girl we were dealing with admitted was 'strange'.

Thank you for your advice re our own assessor.

Update since this afternoon - we received a call late this afternoon to say that the new assessor had put a different value on the car and that this means that the car is no longer a write-off but is fixable as the amount to fix it is less than 60% of the value of the car. They have quoted €6,074 to fix the car. Per your advice we have organised for an assessor to make sure that the car can be made roadworthy again and also another garage (merc dealer) to look at the car to assess repair costs.

Specialist parts was the wrong phrasing I think - maybe just expensive is a better wording, or at least so we were told - the point being that the salvage value of the car is actually quite high, and basically the insurance co. had given us an absolutely ridiculous and insulting quote for payout on the car when you subtract the salvage value.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid but something stinks. Any opinions on what to do?


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## Ravima (12 Apr 2007)

my question is, was theft reported to Gardai, before or after the car was found. I accept it could not be reported to insurers until the Monday.

Anyway, the matter seems to have been happily progressed today


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## aircobra19 (12 Apr 2007)

So one assessor  says €8,750, the new one thats its at least €10,120. You won't get market value, but the new figure of 10,120 is only 63% of the market value (by your estimate) I would have expected 80-90% myself. 

This UK link might be of interest. 
http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/22/issue-22-motorinsurance.htm


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## Keentoinvest (12 Apr 2007)

Thats an interesting one chugh
I only spoke to someone the other day who woke to find 2 cars stolen from his drive way. The offer by the insurance company didnt come close to covering the market value of the care which he wasnt happy with and he had spent approx 2 weeks chasing the company. His point was that he wasnt looking to make money out of it, and would be happy if they would just replace the same model. 

Havent spoken to him since but I would have thought that if you insure a car valued at x that they should either replace the car or at least give you market value


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## ailbhe (13 Apr 2007)

I know there's a booklet (my dad has it) that gives the market value of all cars. This is surprisingly less than what garages charge. This is what the insurers offer. Example was I saw a car for €3300. Looked it up and market value was €2800. I can imagine the margins are wider where the car is worth more.


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## ACA (13 Apr 2007)

> Q. Are there any regulations on how long your insurance co. takes to make you an initial offer (I mean can they take as long as they want while you are without a car)?


Your insurance company will TRY and settle this claim as soon as they can. The delays in closing thus far have been waiting for the assr report and you not being happy with the figure offered.



> Q. Is the insurance co. responsible for the salvage of the car or are you allowed choose salvage company? What rights do you have over your car while a claim is being made?


If the vehicle is deemed a repairable option, they should settle your repairs less any excess on your policy.
If it is beyond economical repair BUT repairable with 2nd hand/spurious parts - catagory C - you COULD keep your vehicle; the ins. co will settle for the assessors pre-accident value (PAV) less the highest bid that they have received for salvage. If being cat. C you decide that you don't want to retain the vehicle, they will settle for the PAV and the vehicle becomes theirs.
If your vehicle is deemed to be only fit for breaking - catagory B - then you do not have the option of keeping it, if you intend to pursue your claim. Under these circumstances it would be the assessor opinion that due to damage it would not be safe to fix. You could drop your claim at this point, and sell the remains of your vehicle to the highest bidder, if you can get the info from the assessor.


> Q. Do you have any right to demand your own assessor for the car?


You can do this by all means, but it would be costly. Motor assessors tend to have set prices for reports done for insurance companies - individuals have been known to pay in excess of €500 for their own report and there is no reason why your insurance company would settle as per this 2nd report anyway. The majority of motor assessors are independent people who do do work for insurance companies, but don't work exclusively for them. It wouldn't be worth the assr's livelihood or reputation to submit a low PAV to keep the insurance company happy.

As stated in previous posts - the actual value is not neccessarily the price in the market place.


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