Most of the bigger insurance companies would replace new for old in year one, and all will put up a bit of a battle in a write-off situation beyond year 1 to settle. You will always have to do the legwork to demonstrate how much your car will really cost to replace to get a decent payout (or get some GAP). On a car so new you always have the right to insist on genuine VAG parts to preserve your warranties when the car is new enough to be under the protection of a warranty, you can also choose where your car goes to get repaired. They sometimes don’t guarantee a courtesy car if you don’t go to their approved repairers, but usually the repairers themselves can supply you with one. A courtesy/hire car is an absolute right if the immobilising accident is not your fault. Insurers repair terms are only applicable to their use of one of their approved repairers. If you choose to take it to a VW approved repairer (as is your right), an independent assessor will decide whether an item can be repaired/straightened out or replaced and in that situation a replaced part will always be a new VAG part when the VW approved repairer repairs your car.
You will never know how sh!te your insurance company is until you make a claim. Elephant were abysmal to me around 6 years ago, for a fully sewn up non-fault claim. Their legal arm were a bunch of money grubbing sheisters that cared nought for the client, they just wanted to screw the other side with vastly overpriced hire car costs and huge markup on any other incidentals. I’m sure they had a hand in delaying my repair to maximise their hire car profit (2 week repair took 7 weeks, and even then they only started at week 5 because I wrote a strongly worded letter to the MD of the Benfield group).
Long and short of it is that VW Insurance may not offer any more protection than anouther insurer. If there’s a significant price differential in it then don’t feel obliged to go with VW insurance.
