Car write off by 3rd party-value low can i insist on being repaired to lever higher payout

[lordloz]

My wife was hit by 3rd party. Car is an old civic, to replace it would be about £900.

Her (the 3rd party) insurance co. have sent a cheque out without agreeing with us or bothering to contact us to the hire car co. this has the effect of cancelling the hire car in 7 days.

We don't agree with this or accept it no one has had courtesy to tell us they were making a payment - the accident was not our fault as they are only sending out £400. We then have to find the extra money to get another car also.

My question is can we insist on car being repaired (it would cost £2500 approx) which would be a lever to increase the payout. We were told by the hire co. not to accept the first offer but we have not even had a first offer any ideas or facts gratefully received.

It wasn't our fault we would have still been driving the car but the insurance say they only have to payout the value before accident.

I was informed by a couple of people that we could insist on it being repaired.

many thanks

[Mwynci]

Unfortunately you cannot insist on getting the vehicle repaired, the third party only has a liability to put you back in the same financial postion just prior to the accident. They don't have to give you the courtesy, you are not their customer. Gone are the days where insurance companies would go out of their way to help third parties.

 

You can contact them or get your hire co/uninsured loss provider to contact them to discuss how the value was assessed.it should be based upon the value, less an amount for what the salvage would be commerically avaliable for, or what you could get if you were to take it to a scrap dealer. From there you can send in any evidence to show the value would be higher, i.e examples from auto trader(possibily Ebay, but this is not universal amongst insurers), or appoint your own engineer to disprove the costs. There is nothing stopping you from being a pain in the ... to them, the worst they can do is tell you to get lost.

You cannot go to Financial Ombudsman, nor expect the third party insurer to abide by their guidelines they publish.

Re: the hire, you have probably gone into some sort of credit hire deal, where the agreement is you come out of hire 7 days after the cheque is received, again you will have problems in convincing all parties for an extension.

Where di you get the £900.00 from, is that your rough guess or have you done your research, if the latter, send them the research ASAP via fax, email etc and chase them.

Good luck.

[lordloz]

Thnaks for that Mwynci,

yes i'm getting that impression now,

 

I'm not bothered about the hire too much - the problem here as well is that no contact from them until they just sent a cheque to car hire firm, they do that to get it off hire asap as i haven't even seen it yet and they haven't had courtesy to tell me amount offered till today.

 

No the loss assessor/engineer asked me to get values off auto trader, i told him it was his job politely but i did anyway, so yes similar vehicle to ours around £795 to £895.

The only saving grace is it's cost them a fortune in car hire already as taken so long and they put us in a higher group car Honda civic 94 , 3 door hatch with 80k miles? they sent us BMW '10 3 series 2litre diesel auto... so at least stung them that way

 

yeah not sure how far to take this i will get at best £300 more is should think is it worth all the grief....i know that's what they count on but......:idea:

[Mwynci]

You now need to ask them to review their offer, or at least let you know how they have assessed the amount, if they have examples of the car being the same spec etc going cheaper at least let you know so you could potentially look to purchase.

You also need to check your examples, if you have picked the highest and they are 400 miles away, then you must allow them to challenge with similarly distanced examples, if you have only looked locally, they need to do the same, not pick from vehicles half way across the country.

Re the hire car, it probably won't cost them any more, but you got a free upgrade, we all love an upgrade, - enjoy it.