Car insurance Q - what happens if a car is written off

music.babe75

A friend of mine recently received his car insurance renewal and noticed this car is insured for 15,000 - his car is only worth about half this.

He rang the insurance co to change the value insured and they advised it would not bring down the premium and anyway, if the car was written off, the insurance company would pay 12,000 e.g. as that would be the cost to purchase a new car of the same model

I said this is wrong - if his car was written off - would he not only get the value of his car at the point it was written off say 6000 or 7000?

Anan1

You're right, the ins co will only pay the market value at the time of the accident.

Trampas

Doesn't matter what you insured your car for it. It is only worth the book value

music.babe75

Kinda scary the Insurance Co was putting him off dropping the value he is insured for - he is over insured by approx double but they said if they do reduce it, it won't affect the premium

They said if the new price of a car was not 15K he would not get 15K - but would only get the value of a new car say 12K even though his own is about 7K or so.......

Insurance Companies should be training their customer service staff to a certain level of basic insurance knowlege surely!!