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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.