Goddamn. Rear Ended And Insurance Company Mention 'Total Loss' To Me. [UPDATE 2]

[mookie]

I don't know whether I'm being misinformed, but if I did decide to buy my car back as a write off, would the insurance premiums be higher, or would I struggle to get insurance at all when it needs renewed? I'm with Norwich Union, and they've offered to sort out the repairs/claim for me rather than me pursuing the other drivers insurance company myself - I pay my excess and then claim it back later on. A work colleague has mentioned that this will therefore go down as a claim on my own policy, and combined with a potential cat c/d write off I could end with a serious increase in my premium 

Everything looked so rosy and fun when I passed my test. Reality seems a lot grimmer right now...

[Uruk Hai]

The way it works with insurance is that it will be a claim on your policy until the bloke who hit your's insurance cough up and pay your company the cost of the claim, the last time someone hit me my insurance waved the excess as it was obviously not my fault and claimed it straight off the other blokes insurance. As for insuring a cat C write off it mite be worth asking your insurance what their policy is in cases like this but I wouldn't have thought it would be a big deal as the car would be an economical write off and not due to the amount of damage as a result of the accident. With the cost of repairs carried out by authorized repairers I would have thought that most company's insure cat C write offs, the fact is that the only thing that makes a car Cat C write off or uneconomical repair is the huge expense involved in using the insurance approved repair company's. I had a car repaired after being hit from behind and the cost of the insurance approved repair shop was more than twice as much as the price I had from a bloke I used to respray bits of the same car before the accident, if you really do want to hold onto the car then you've gotta stick to your guns and make sure your insurance know what you want from them after all you pay there wages 

[martinb]

unfortunatly with insurance you are seen as "guilty until proven innocent" so the claim will be held as fault until your insurers make a full recovery from the third patry's insurers.
Insuring a cat c write off does not normally incur any extra premium with us (although do check with your own insurer) but some of our underwriters may ask for a fresh mot and should the vehicle be involved in another accident it will be valued even lower having been declared as a previous write off.

Best of luck mate, as others have said, dont accept the first offer and send pictures/adverts of similar cars at enthusiast prices eg from magazines etc

I dont really deal with the claims side of things but let me know if you need to know anything else, hope this helps a bit.....

Martin

[martinb]

just looked into this a bit more for you and a cat c write off is described as:

"described as major damage (eg kinked roof), such vehicles can be repaired by a qualified repairer using a jig, specialist tools and full workshop facilities"

so looking at the pictures i cannot understand why they are classing it as a cat c. Most of our underwriters will actually require an engineers report when insuring a category C write off stating that the vehicle has been repaired to a good standard and is safe to use on the road. From the damage pictured i would expect it to be a Cat D write off which is described as:

"best described as DIY repair, vehicles in this category only require external panels. The chassis, front crossmembers and steering are all unaffected"

Sounds more like it to me, we would insure a cat D with just a copy of the V5 and MOT certs.

Hope this information is usefull/makes sense, keep me posted how you get on....

Martin

[mookie]

Yeah that's really useful actually as the previous definitions and advice I've had has been a little more vague than that when it came to the various catergories of w/o's. The lady I spoke to at Norwich Union mentioned either C or D depending on the damage, but on this and one or two other things was extremely vague indeed.

[mookie]

Quick Update:

Just back from the bodyshop/repair centre. Had a really pleasant chat with the assessor fella, who'd owned a couple of GTi himself in the past. Said mine was in good condition and quite a nice looking example to boot 

Bad news is that he estimated the cost to repair at around the £800-900 mark (sounds excessive to me) although he couldn't give any sort of exact figure due to the unknown cost of the bumper, and that based on the mileage and reg of the car it would be likely to be written off.

Good news was that he said it wasn't a foregone conclusion and that he has known companies to sometimes raise the boundary for repairs as high as 85% of the total value of the vehicle before writing them off. I'll find out within a couple of days he reckoned, so fingers crossed.

[Uruk Hai]

Good luck mate, I hope you get the result you want 

[[han]]

good luck!

[Thom89]

As I said in my last post, go for a "contract repair", making sure that the car doesn't get put on the hit list!  basically they will offer you a max amount, that they are prepared to pay, its then up to you to get the job done.. they might also insist that the car goes for an mot test before paying the bill!!! so if theres anything dodgy that you might have on your car, make sure its sorted..
Tom

[tinman]

iirc

Cat D is economic repair
Cat C is uneconomic repair

Its Cat C because its £200 for a new bumber and at least another £100+ for a new rear panel. Rear panel needs cutting out and welding back in (as long as the boot is stright as someone else said - which it probably is). Then a rear spray on the rear end which is another £300. The labour will be north of £300 as well. So you are looking at the thick end of a grand to get it done properly. Economic is worked out on 60% of the cars value.

I would get it done properly as well - not this banging it out and then sticking in filler rubbish. The reason is that the rear panel has a curve and you will never get close to what it was originally, and although no one else will notice it - you will notice a huge uneven shut gap where the new bumper meets the bodywork.

If you love the car, get it written off, buy it back, get the back sorted out properly and keep it for the rest of its life.