Car storage place claiming they disposed of car....advice please

T-rev

Ok, a friend of mine has a car, was written off before Xmas. He has been really busy and nto able to go and sort it out as the storage place is only open 9-5. Cut a long story short, he rang them and they said oh we disposed of that car and crushed it.

When he was last speaking with them they said we need the owner cert to dispose of it so can you bring this in asap.

There were 4 brand new tyres on the car, some good diy tools in the boot and sat nav and loads of cd's and other stuff worth money. They are claiming they crushed all of the contents with the car.

What can he do? Does he have any rights here?

He highly doubts it was disposed, more like stripped and sold for parts. timing belt snapped so needed a whole new engine but the rest of the car was in fine working order. It was a 02 with 50,000 on the clock.

Anan1

Did he sign anything when they took the car? I presume so, i'd find out what. FWIW, any time i've ever walked away from a written -off car it's been with plastic bags filled with my stuff.

T-rev

Yeah I would think so, I'll check with him to see did he sign anything.

mickdw

If it was written off, I assume you mean he got an insurance pay out from it. If that is the case, it is no longer his car & has no rights over it. Regardless of that, he was taking the piss if he thought someone would just hold the car in a yard for him for ever until he got is cds out of it.
That car was most likely passed on to this breaker yard by insurers. Breakers would then lawfully make as much money from it as possible by selling anything they can off it & then selling the crushed scrap metal

ha-ya-said-what

Of all the claims I've dealt with I've never heard or had anyone claim a car on insurance due to a snapped timing belt.

Anyway, routine of it tends to be they'll offer you a lump sum for the car as a pay out, then they'll make a salvage offer where you have so many days to reply to offer, if you don't then they'll take it you not accepting the offer & taking the full sum offered therefore the car becomes their property. If your friend was busy then he may have overlooked that or forgot all about it.

Also he might want to check and see if his insurance covers storage charges, cos some of them don't, some only cover a percentage and so on so he could get hit with a bill for storage charges and that will be a lot if it's been sat in a yard since xmas.

keithclancy

T-rev wrote: »

Ok, a friend of mine has a car, was written off before Xmas. He has been really busy and nto able to go and sort it out as the storage place is only open 9-5. Cut a long story short, he rang them and they said oh we disposed of that car and crushed it.

When he was last speaking with them they said we need the owner cert to dispose of it so can you bring this in asap.

There were 4 brand new tyres on the car, some good diy tools in the boot and sat nav and loads of cd's and other stuff worth money. They are claiming they crushed all of the contents with the car.

What can he do? Does he have any rights here?

He highly doubts it was disposed, more like stripped and sold for parts. timing belt snapped so needed a whole new engine but the rest of the car was in fine working order. It was a 02 with 50,000 on the clock.

If it was written off in a crash and he claimed on insurance it wasn't his car anymore after that point, that also includes the contents.

I wouldn't even leave my car into a garage to be service with Cds, Sat Nav etc. Lesson learned and move on I think.

He'd have no way of proving that stuff was in the car either.