Veolia drove into my parked car and total loss value seems far too low - opinions and advice please!

[Richard2581]

A Veolia commercial vehicle drove into my parked car and fortunately left a note, accepting responsibility.   The damage is a relatively minor dent in the rear quarter, which would pull out easily, and more serious damage to the passenger door and passenger side front wing panel.   These two will need to be replaced.   There is no structural damage and the car drives as normal - it is cosmetic damage only.   Strata solicitors handle all claims on Veolia's behalf and requested some images of the damage, which I promptly sent.     Strata have advised that they would deem the car a total loss.

 

Their assessors have apparently estimated the cost of repair (at an Audi approved bodyshop) at around £4,000 and have valued my car at just £3,100.   On this basis, their initial offer was either £3,100 and they take my car away OR £2,300 and I keep the car.     

 

My vehicle is a 2010 Audi A5 3.0 diesel S Line convertible, well specced and well maintained & invested in mechanically.   It is however, high mileage, having done 201,000 miles.    It also has the odd scratch here and there, which is no surprise given the age of the vehicle and the fact that it spends a reasonable amount of time parked in the street. 

 

In order to dispute the value offered by Strata I have checked Autotrader and found a selection of comparable vehicles.    There weren't many of this model for sale, so to get a selection I had to work with a range from 1 year older than mine to 1 year younger,  which I think is a reasonable spread given the age of the vehicle.    These cars were between £12,500 and £9,500 and I sent screenshots of about 6 examples to Strata.  These cars had between around 50,000 miles, up to 90,000 ish.  Initially the person I've been dealing with was seemingly of the opinion that the value should be reviewed in light of such a stark contrast between their offer of £3,100 and the value of the comparable vehicles, but today they told me that the relevant department was unwilling to review their valuation because the cars on Autotrader cars were not an 'exact like for like'. 

 

I am more than willing for the value of my car to be reduced to reasonably reflect the mileage, but feel that the value offered thus far borders upon insulting.    

 

The outcome I would like is to accept the car as being a total loss, receive the payout and keep the car, which I can then arrange to have repaired myself.    I would like to ask the forum users two questions please.

 

1.   Given the data points shared, what might be a fair value / a realistic value for me to aim for in this case?

 

2.  Since Strata / Veolia have said that they aren't willing to negotiate, would I be best advised to contact my insurer or utilise a claims management company, to get to my desired outcome?   (And if a claims management company would be best, any recommendations are most welcome.)

 

Hope I haven't missed any important info out.   Would really appreciate any advice, as I'm keen to be reasonable but don't want to be taken advantage of either.  

 

Thanks

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

[dx100uk]

never use CMC's you'll come out worse.

 

any commercial vehicle fleet operator will always state as they have, they blow their chest out out and say a joe public simply complies.

you need someone on your side, and that is most probably your own ins co.

 

are you 3rd party only or fully comp?

 

calling @unclebulgaria67 our expert

 

dx

 

 

 

[Richard2581]

dx100UK, thanks for the reply.    I'm fully comprehensive with LV. 

[dx100uk]

then IMHO they are entitled to be involved and should be, you will also have free legal cover..

 

let @unclebulgaria67 advise please before you do anything.

 

dx

 

 

 

[stu007]

I have to agree

 

That Companies Insurance Company are working in the best interests of that Company not they person who vehicle has been damaged due to the negligence of their driver of their company vehicle.

 

Get your own Insurance Company involved in this and the one question I would insist your own insurance company ask that commercial companies insurance is:

 

How many accidents has the driver of that Commercial Vehicle had since been Employed with that Company

 

As said wait for UB to pop in to see what they say.

[unclebulgaria67]

The general rule of thumb is apparently that car values reduce by 20% for each 20,000 additional miles. This is simply because they may have had a much harder life, more wear and tear.

 

So if you took the higher value £12500 for a car with 100,000 miles, then for the same car make/model but with 200,000 miles, it would have a value of about £4000. Calculated 12,500 minus 20% =  then minus 20% etc etc.   You don't just look at half of £12500.

 

The offer on the car is low (ish) at £3100, but it then depends on what steps you are willing to take and how much time you have to argue. I doubt you would gain much from pursuing increased write off value.

 

There are online car valuation guides such as Parkers or Glass ( glass.co.uk). If these show a higher value, you could go back to Strata with the valuation and say pay this or I will go to my own Insurance company and this will increase the costs of dealing with the claim. Suspect Strata are on a deal where they get paid stated amount for x volume of claims and not per claim, so they have to try to minimise costs.

 

If you can get the car repaired at cheaper cost at local garage, then accepting a write off value and keeping car to repair might be a good option. But do ask whether Strata or their car valuers have or will be registering write off and if so what details are recorded.

[Richard2581]

Thank you all for the input.

 

I hadn’t realised that mileage was deemed to have such a huge impact on value.  
 

How does this balance against the idea of putting me in a position to replace the vehicle financially?  Whilst the equation may be a trade metric, I’m simply not seeing any cars for sale at or around that price.

 

Additionally, I guess that classing the car as an economic write off will further decrease its value when I eventually do sell it on?

 

Therefore, in any of these scenarios I would seem to be coming off worse off than I was pre-incident, despite having no fault.    What would you guys do? What is the best / least worst option here? 

[unclebulgaria67]

If you do go down route of using your own Insurers, if you don't have protected no claims, your Insurers might reduce no claims discount until full claim payout is recovered from third party, so ask your Insurers about this. You could faced increased premium until no claims discount reinstated.

 

And any claim on your record, fault or non fault would mean a premium loading would apply, so increase in future premiums say 10%+ per year over next 3 years or so.

 

With a high mileage vehicle like this, unless it is a rare special edition or has expensive additional extras, then the value is going to be relatively low. Someone might pay £10k for one in good condition that only has 100k miles as they may think that it would be OK for x number of years, but with 200k miles it is a different proposition.

 

I think if you managed to get a settlement for write off closer to £4k  then you would not be worse off. Or if you were offered £3200 plus kept the car, you would not be worse off. But get quotes from local garages to see if the car could be repaired for about £3k . Sure the parts could be purchased from salvage yards and the sprayed to match.

[Richard2581]

Thanks.  Fortunately, I am fully comprehensive, with protected no claims. 
 

Even at a cost that covers value of repair work, plus maybe a couple of hundred pounds, it’s hard to feel that it’s even a neutral result after all the related admin, inconvenience and so on, but I see what you mean in pure numbers.

 

Perhaps their offer isn’t so far out after all. 

[theberengersniper]

3 hours ago, Richard2581 said:

Perhaps their offer isn’t so far out after all. 

 

Also worth remembering; the vehicles you're looking at to establish replacement value are likely to be retail prices inclusive of VAT. The price you're being offered by the insurer will be trade value, and hence widens the gulf between the two figures.

 

On the basis that the car is in mechanically superb condition and is well cared for and maintained, I think I would push the insurer to settle for £3100 cash and you keep the car too, as suggested by the others earlier in the thread. If they can be persuaded to go for that suggestion, I think you'd be in a good spot. I'm certain a non-Audi body shop can complete the repairs for a 1/3 of the price Audi quote, at least.

 

By way of illustration, I need new discs and pads on my BMW M135i. That is a £1700 job from BMW, but I've had it done at an independent specialist for £500. Same parts too!

[Richard2581]

Thanks for this input guys.   It’s very useful to get some perspectives on it and as a first time user of this forum I’ve appreciated people taking the time to offer advice, especially so quickly.

Based on the range of values mentioned here, I’m not sure I’ll be able to come out slightly worse off in one way or another, but perhaps not quite so badly as I first imagined. 
 

Does anyone know how much impact on insurance premium a reclassification of my vehicle to a Cat N might have? 

[unclebulgaria67]

Cat N, that is fully repaired, may not be treated much differently for Insurance quotes.  I would not expect to pay more for the Insurance, but would shop around, if the current Insurers did increase the premium specifically due to this.  But you might not be aware of whether the Cat N is a factor or not, because having this loss incident declared on Insurance will increase the premium anyway.

 

If the write off was for a category that included structural repairs, then that would be different.

[Richard2581]

Thanks again.  Should the calculation as to a settlement include these additional financial impacts?

 

eg quite aside from the cost of repair, I’m likely to have increased premiums in one way or another.     Similarly, if I sell the car (even repaired) the value is diminished because it would be a Cat N vehicle.

 

All in, I’m not sure how I won’t suffer some downside within this - too many trapdoors. Very frustrating given that it’s all down to someone hitting my parked car.  

[unclebulgaria67]

For indirect losses you could issue a County Court claim against Veolia and their driver.  But you would need to come up with evidence to support the sum of claim. So start collecting evidence.

[theberengersniper]

19 hours ago, Richard2581 said:

Does anyone know how much impact on insurance premium a reclassification of my vehicle to a Cat N might have? 

 

As is often the answer to these types of things...it depends.

 

Some insurers will observe any category of write-off against a vehicle and decline to insure the risk right off the bat. Others are a lot less black and white. Remember, a vehicle is designated a Category N write-off when the projected repair cost exceeds a certain percentage of the vehicle's market value. In other words, the insurer knows the damage is perfectly repairable, but in their eyes it's just not financially prudent to do so; however, you as the former owner are using a great many more indicators of condition than the insurer is, e.g., maintenance, reliability, comfort, performance, memories etc, hence the difference of opinion on whether the vehicle should be repaired.

 

On that basis, I agree with 'unclebulgaria67', in that those insurers who will accept the risk of a Category N vehicle are unlikely to charge more for doing so than your average car, purely because, as I mentioned above, a Category N write-off guarantees no structural damage to the car, meaning it's purely cosmetic. That position is probably dependent on the accident being recorded against your policy as non-fault of course. Your premium certainly will rise if the accident is attributed to you (which we know it isn't, but that doesn't stop insurers being cheeky), or even settled 50/50, so I would check that if I were you.

 

I still think your best course of action is to pursue the £3100 cash offer, and try to get the car back.

 

In the meantime, if I were you, I would establish a list of parts required to perform the repair, then I would begin calling round various Audi or VAG breakers, establishing the availability of second-hand parts so you can source all of that stuff quickly once the decision to repair has been made. Don't forget to factor in the cost of fitting, preparing and painting the replacement parts too.