Total Loss on car

Lord Alibaski

Lord Alibaski

Lord Alibaski

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Joined
11 Oct 2005
Posts
1,273
Location
Doncaster
2 Weeks ago a car pulled out on us going up a 1 way street no indication (learner driver) and hit the side of our car they have claimed liability insurance sorted it out car was picked up and it's been at the repair shop for nearly 2 weeks. On the same day I took the car to our garage who said it was just cosmetic damage and the car is safe to drive.

Not much damage at all to the car seeing as the car was only traveling around 8 mph some pics below

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Today we had a phone call from the insurance and they have said the car is a total loss and the garage gave them a quote for £4600!! for repair, we know all this garage would have done is pay for replacement front arch and back arch and not try and repair it hence the quote being so high. They said there is a dint the size of a football in the front arch and back arch you can clearly see there isn't. We have been told to get a 2nd quote from another garage ourselves we tried today and had 2 quotes 1st one was about £800 if it went through insurance or £600 if we paid it. The 2nd quoted us it could be between 1k and 3k without looking at it they couldn't say much because the garage still has our car.

We just hope our insurance doesn't say it's a write off when it clearly isn't we are not bothered about the dent in the arch it just needs a good T-cut or paint job.

I have never been in an accident before so no idea where we stand on insurance with this repair so any advice would be helpful on what we could do from here.
 
I had an accident like that several years go. It was repaired via other drivers insurance. Damage on yours mirrors what mine looked like!

Plus, your premium will go up when renewing too....mine did. Pathetic insurance companies!
 
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What car is it? What's it's approximate value? That is what ultimately decides whether it's a write off.

In the event that it is written off, you may have the option to buy the car back, have it repaired yourself, with the only minor issue being it will have an insurance Category (U) marker.
 
Says it all when the guy said he’d do it for you for £600 but charge the insurance firm £800. Neither party has any incentive to haggle the price down. The garage gets more £££ and the insurers just raise premiums to get more £££. And you have no choice but to pay. Car insurance - the whole thing - is a racket.
 
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Looks an old car so hardly surprising it's designated a write off. If you really want to keep it and aren't bothered by the cosmetic damage just offer to buy it back from the insurance company.
 
That's surely not a £600-800 job...

It looks like half the car is damaged and will need to be resprayed, parts labour and time (+ insurance tax) are probably not far off the original price you've been quoted. They're quoting to fix it back to 100%, not 80%/polished in places.
 
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Is your car at the other parties garage still driveable for you to be able to take it away, if you do say you want to buy it back ? ie they haven't started any investigative work that might make that problematic,
and maybe found damage above what your garage suspected.
if so need to make sure their insurance company tells garage asap you may want to buy it back, if the price is acceptable to you (< market value - 4.6K )

also if you have a loaner need to make sure those costs aren't escalating, in case insurance company might add some of that into buy back cost (perhaps it is illegal for them to do that?)
 
As above if the car is written off you can get a payout for the car (haggle the price as they might try to low ball) and buy it back, if you really want it and want to repair it.
 
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@ Armageus

The car is a 2014 Ford Fiesta 1.2 Hatchback only as 56k mileage it was in immaculate condition.


@ jpaul

The car is perfectly driveable it was checked by our garage that we have used for the last 20 odd years.


The garage where it is now all they have said is the damage is a dint on both wheel arches there is no dint on the back arch it's just a scratch. I have been looking up this same issue with the insurance company we use which is Saga and they seem to do this all the time. They send it to the same garage who keep hold of it for a few weeks then tell you the same thing it's a total loss, then they expect you to buy the car back.

I will be phoning them 1st thing tomorrow to see what they say, by the time they phoned us today we had no time to phone back because their offices were closed.

We just find it disgusting because the car is pefectly fine just the odd dint and a bit of paint work needs doing.

This is the damage to the other car (another Fiesta) if ours is a total loss surely this is as well.

 
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Lord Alibaski said:
@ Armageus

The car is a 2014 Ford Fiesta 1.2 Hatchback only as 56k mileage it was in immaculate condition.
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A quick look on autotrader suggests you could get another for £3500 or so.

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Bearing that in mind approx half that is normally the point at which they write it off as uneconomical to repair.
£1750 is not beyond the realms of possibility for a good body shop repair, admin costs and anything else.
You have at least 3 panels that need to be repaired and resprayed (wing, door and rear quarter), and that's just cosmetic damage you can see, assuming nothing is bent e.g. door alignment.

By all means you can probably get a "body shop" to do an £800 repair, but insurers will generally want it done using a repairer they know the reputation of, not "bob's blow overs".
(If this was a £20000 car, would you want the insurer to use a cheap body shop?)
 
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Lord Alibaski said:
This is the damage to the other car (another Fiesta) if ours is a total loss surely this is as well.

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That looks to just be the bumper that's damaged, so only a single panel.
I recently had a new genuine bumper supplied and painted for a Ford Kuga and that was £800.

Even if that was written off that's far easier to repair than yours - a second hand bumper in the right colour is probably £150 and could be DIY'd.
 
ive found in the past, bring the car away from the garage, inform saga you want a settlement figure for the car with you keeping it. they will make you a offer on the value of the car , which you may agree to or disagree (you do not have to accept if too cheap).
if the value is ok then they deduct the salvage value of your vehicle from that total and send you a cheque. you then either carry on driving it or have a repair done and drive it then pocket the rest.
son did the same when a merc ran into his mondeo the insurance money paid for his family holiday to morroco:)

from what you describe it sounds like the other party hit you so they have the claim against them so your excess is refundable. only problem is as said you will get a higher insurance premium next time around but hey ho.

remember its your vehicle until and unless you accept them paying out in full and taking it, thats why i said fetch it back better with you than racking up storage at a garage.
 
Entire industry is crooked. Having had a similar experience i can only assume these ‘authorised’ garages are some kind of racket because full extended quote we insisted on seeing (not the summary) was a laundry list of stuff that 4x the actual repair cost.

Drivers insurance had cheek to knock off 40% buyback to car value after write off, which they knocked down to 30% after complaining.
 
Ali195 said:
Entire industry is crooked.
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Mason- said:
- is a racket.
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Yup.

My next door neighbour had a reasonably new Toyota Aygo tiny little car, someone reversed into him in a car park.

The damage, honestly, just looked like someone had kicked the car and put a little foot sized dent in it.

The repair bill came out at like £6500. Aside from what you'd sort of expect (even taking the ****) on the damage side, they charged for stuff like checking the diagnostic, then a separate charge for resetting the diagnostic (there were no warning lights), charging up the battery - I can't remember the rest but there were many things that literally had nothing to do with any damage.

The other parties insurance were actually borderline going to take my neighbours insurance to court and my neighbour was summoned, but it got called off at the last minute.
 
Insurance companies and repair companies need to be majorly regulated, My BMW 330 (2020) got written off earlier this year, damage was a bumper,bonnet,headlight,wing, and bumper bar (no airbags etc. Bolt on repair all in all, Car was valued at 15/16k. The repair bill was a scandalous 8k, so the car got written of. Looking on Copart, some of cars written off are crazy, hardly any damage at all.
 
Tinders said:
Insurance companies and repair companies need to be majorly regulated, My BMW 330 (2020) got written off earlier this year, damage was a bumper,bonnet,headlight,wing, and bumper bar (no airbags etc. Bolt on repair all in all, Car was valued at 15/16k. The repair bill was a scandalous 8k, so the car got written of. Looking on Copart, some of cars written off are crazy, hardly any damage at all.
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Bumper, bonnet, headlight, wing and bumper bar, have you priced up what those would cost? Presumably direct from BMW? Plus paint which is probably at £1-2k to paint all that, at least.

What do you reckon? A £5-6k job that they put an extra £2-3k on? It might be closer than you think. Headlights can be crazy prices alone.
 
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years ago my cherished yellow peril (in sig) was written off. I took the insurance pay off and then bought it back off them for around £400. it took so long i could not get it sorted for myself but i sold it to an enthusiast, made a few quid and kept a fairly rare car on the road.

your insurance may not go up as much as you fear. last year my wifes car was written off, not her fault and it had a negligable effect on our insurance premium. fingers crossed.
the market is a mess at the moment, with repairs taking so long hire cars are adding a huge premium on.

our insurance paid us an extra £350 on top of our total loss if we chose not to take the courtesy car (which was only for a week anyway) so we took that as well.

if the car is just a run around, i would try to buy that back if its only cheap and just drive it with the damage to it (so long as it is just cosmetic).
 
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