wideybrook

My mate has just been ripped off by his insurance company.

His wife wrote off their beloved Honda VTI civic 1996, imaculate mica blue. The insurance coughed up £4500 althought the book price is £7000.

Has anyone else had this sort of problem with Scoobys. The trouble is we phone around for the cheapest insurance but do not know how much they will pay up when we come to claim.

I'm with Adrian Flux does anyone have claims experience from them or other companies?

robski

Dont accept 1st offer unless you are happy with it. Start negotiating.

robski

KRS

This disgusts me. I've said before that insurance companies are like crooks on occasion.

Write some pretty business like letters to them. Speak to them and also go to the Citezens advice.

Your pay large amounts of money to insure your car for its value. Why then should you except anything less than the book value of the car.

Saying that the insurance companies are just trying it on.

Don't give up.

Yex

If your mate's car was well looked after by a dealer perhaps they could provide a letter as to how much it would cost to replace the car with one in the same condition, including examples of prices from the Honda network possibly.

All insurance companies try to wriggle off the hook....nail the ba$tards down

Yex

ptholt

Here's some interesting little facts that some may not know.

the car has to be damaged to a certain percentage of its retail price in order to be written off (differs from company to company). If it is written off they offer you trade money (though the likelihood is we couldnt replace like for like at trade prices).

As said above NEVER accept first offer.

If you think cars are bad try this for bikes - but i suspect this may also work the same for cars.

Mate of mine had a 30mph drop on his 6 month old ducati 996 which cost £13.5k (lots of extras) on the road.
the damage was £7k plus another £1k if the clutch was damaged beyond repair.
For the insurance company to write it off, it needed to have 80% of retail worth of repairs. Would you fancy riding around on something that needed £8k worth of repairs ?

Moz

First thing to ask them is, `do you think i will be able to replace my vehicle with one of the same standard for the money your offering me?` If they say yes then tell them to locate one and you will accept the offer,I`ll bet they wont.

Orville

Why do they bither to ask you for the value of the car when insuring it if they don't intend to pay out. My life insurance policy states that if I die my girlfriend gets £268k (enought to pay the mortgage and buy a few more Scoobs ). I assume this will not be contested so why is it with car insurance. If you pay the premium for it to be insured for £20k, you should get it.

W***ERS.

MorayMackenzie

Orville,

I agree!

Unfortunatley the LAW requires that we MUST buy these companies products, so they basically have a license to deal with your policy/claim however they want, as long as they think they could justify it to a judge if you took 'em in front of one.

Moray
(Norwich Union seem to be fairly reasonable in my expirience)

MorayMackenzie

Oh,

I remember a friend relating the story of a total-loss claim he had to make. Apparently the insurers offered him stupidly little money, so he excercised his right under the policy to insist that they replace the car like-for-like, which they did.

Moray

wideybrook

Thanks for all of your reply's so far.
My friend who got stuffed by the insurance company has taken a month of negotiating to agree the £4500, he turned down 3 offers. He is a mechanic at a Honda dealers, and has already tried convincing the insurance company of the true value of the car. Another dealer in our area is currently selling an identical car for £7200.

I think the only solution is that insurance companies must agree the replacement cost of the car when the insurance is bought, but this will no doubt put up the price!

CharlesW

This is a scam that most insurance companies try to pull. Where do all those "damaged repairables" come from.

This happened to me 14 years ago. Someone ran into the back of my car while I was stationary at a junction, so there was no way it was going to cost my insurance company anything. However the price to repair the damage was 2000 pounds. The insurance company wished to write the vehicle off and offered me 5000 pounds for a car that would cost 6000 pounds to replace.
The garage(the official dealer for the make of car in question) revealed to me that the insurance company had offered the car to them as a damaged repairable for 3500 pounds. This meant their loss would have been 1500 pounds rather than the 2000 it would have cost to repair it. I thought this was pretty low since they were going to get the money back off the other guy's insurance.
Any I threatened them with a claim through the courts. 15 minutes later they ring back to say they would repair the car.

They are just trying it on.