non fronty insurance write off help

[justdan]

today my sister had a smash , she has a very nice 2.2 astra sri !!!! show car ) dvds , fat wheels all that rubbish ..... and today some plank on the 1st day of his new job pulled across her and has writen her motor off ........
now here is the issue
admiral ( her insurance ) have writen the car off over the phone , they are refusing to sell her the motor back as they say its unroad worthy ( cat d ) yet i could go to a salvage yard and buy a cat d without any issues . they say if she removes anything of the car , it must be replaced / paid for ................
theyve not seen the car so how can they writen it of ????? any body no about the buying it back issue because iv not got a clue !!!

cheers gents

[MG Autos (Mark)]

They can write it off without examining if they feel the damage you've described would make it beyond reasonable economic repair, however they will likely have someone come and view it at some point.
What's probably happened is the claims advisor has told her it's "Likely" to be written off. They never make a decision until they've spoken to the under writer and she'll have to agree to their settlement offer anyway before anyhting is finalized.
Has she declared all of the mods to the insurance company in the first place ? If not i'd start to replace the standard parts ASAP as they can and often do refuse to pay out if they find undeclared modifications so it may be in her interests that the better equipment is removed anyway.

Also if they do decide they don't want to sell you the "scrap" the decison can sometimes be influenced if it's costing them money. I.E if the car is towed to a secure storage yard that charges by the day while awaiting settlement. If their costs are racking up daily it tends to speed up the process and allows them to be more "pro active" with disposal options.

Good luck with it

[justdan]

the car is on her drive , the person she spoke basicaly said ' its a write off ' we need to arrange disposal '

yer she has declaired all the mods ( she is far to honest not to lol )

will keep you guys informed

[kees]

As far as i know a cat d is where they consider it to more than the value of the car but only cosmetic damage, not structual and can still be used as long as it is safe to do so but needs a vic ( vehicle identity check ) if it gets sold. My fronty was a cat c wright off and they cancelled the mot and v5 when i got it back. Had to do a vic to apply for a new log book. As i say i am not 100% with cat d. My insurance company wanted to take the car aswell but i insisted that i wanted to keep it

[furball]

First thing to note is that you aren't obliged to have your insurance company deal with this. If you want you can simply inform your insurers that the accident has happened and that you are instructing a solicitor to deal with it. However, the longer any process takes the less you will get for it if you do decide to get the insurers to sort it out. I'm not necessarily advising this as a course of action of course, just making you aware that the option is there.

Secondly, until an offer has been made by your insurers and accepted by you nothing is final. You aren't obliged to accept their first offer, but again, the longer it takes the more it costs the insurance company so they will look to offer you less if it takes ages for you to agree.

Lastly, a category D writeoff is classed as economically repairable but the insurers won't repair it for some other reason. In this case the other reason is probably the modifications - they would repair it if it was standard but the additional cost of posh wheels, body kit, etc makes it too expensive. The reason they won't let you take anything off the car is most likely because they have a contract with a salvage yard that specifies that the vehicle is delivered to them as is. This is, of course, because in your case the car has lots of nice bits that the salvage company can remove and sell for a nice tidy profit. Your best bet in this case would probably be to try and negotiate the car as part of the settlement (assuming the total settlement is going to be more than the value of the car in it's current condition).

[justdan]

nes so far . the insurance have offered her £1100 for the car ( via email ) the break down of what she will get is

£1100
-£50 excess
- £220 salvage .............. to me this says they are letting her keep the car ??? she is going to phone them this aftrenoon to find out what the deal is ???
im thinking on her first phone call she has got a person at the end of there shift that couldnt be bothered to deal with it and has filled her full of

[furball]

Generally if you phone them the person you speak to will be someone who's only training will be to follow the script on the screen in front of them. When they phone you back it will be a claims handler who knows more and can do more