Motor insurance - derisory settlement offer

shayg1971

[Cross Posting in Consumer Issues and Motors]

My wife had her car stolen about 6 weeks ago. Quite apart from the amount of time it's taken, Hibernian have come back with what I'd consider a pretty derisory settlement offer.

The car was a 2002 Honda HRV 5D 4WD with 50K miles, full Honda history and spotless. Hibernian are offering €12K.

A quick scan of Carzone and CBG shows that private sellers are looking for €2K more for similar, and dealers up to €5K more.

What should the game-plan be here? Does anyone accept a 1st offer? Is there some independent arbitration I can seek, and would it be worth it?

I'm happy to say I have these questions because this has never happened to me before....

stifz

Hold out. Don't accept anything until your happy. Keep printed sale offers of similair vehicle as reference..

unkel

Don't accept the indeed derisory offer of €12k. The cheapest one on carzone with similar mileage has an asking price of €17.5k. Point that out to them. I know it's not that relevant, but what is the insured value on your policy?

Henry Ford III

Appoint a loss assessor/adjuster to negotiate on your behalf?

MercMad

It would be no harm getting a stock list from a dealer together with a printoff from Carzone and sending that to them. Also even better would be to ask a dealer to give you a letter stating the pre-accident value, he may do this on the basis that you are now looking for another car !!

Best of luck !

Guy:Incognito

I know its not what they go for but the omsp on the vrt site is €11.5k.

DaveD

Go to a main dealer, give them the exact spec of your vehicle and ask them to place a market value on it for you. Get it in writing and send it into Hibernian.

johncm

as far as i know dont the insurance company go by the book value of the car

jimmycrackcorm

I'd hold out. Happened to me years ago and I refused to accept their offer until they bumped it up. As long as you have valued the car at the same or in excess of the normal market value thenthey can't say they are giving you fair value for it.

You have to remember that the easiest way for an Insurance company to increase their profits is to get their staff to attempt to pay out as little as possible. There are plenty of mugs out there who think that this is all the Insurance will pay and just accept the offer.

Ask them to show where you can buy the equivalent of your car for the offer price they are making.

DaveD

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Ask them to show where you can buy the equivalent of your car for the offer price they are making.

They don't have to do that. They give you what their assessor believes is the market value, this figure is usually researched by contacting main dealers or as stated in the Car Sales Guide. Its up to you to prove your car is worth more if you disagree with their valuation.

_Kaiser_

I had this when my first car was deemed not "economical to repair" by the other party's insurance co.

I had paid €6200 for it not 6 months earlier (and that was cheap), yet al they were offering me was about €4500 (based on the book value/assessors report).

So I had to escalate to management before I get anywhere (my mood wasn't helped by the fact that they'd sat around for the first week doing nothing while I meanwhile was off the road). I made the manager go to Carzone, search for cars like mine and when she realised that yes, considering that cars older and with more mileage than mine were selling for as much (or more in a few cases) than I paid, she went off to reconsider her offer.

My position throughout was that as far as I was concerned, their client was in the wrong and had (there and then in fairness) accepted liability, so therefore THEIR job was to get me back on the road in the condition I was in before the accident - ie: WITHOUT a written off car or nearly 2 grand out of pocket.

Another 2 days of literally shouting at this woman followed (we were up to 3 weeks of back and forth at this stage), but in the end I got what I paid ... so moral of the story is keep at them until you get what you're owed and don't be afraid to ask for managers if you're not getting anywhere with whoever they've assigned to the case at the moment.