Giovanni

Unless you ARE planning to sue and you want to start dealing directly with their Legal Department I would NOT mention the word Sue.

Jerry Feather

That might be correct, but on the other hand I have seen in the past that the mention of "my Attorney" in support of some of the elements of your proposal might carry some weight.

cali4sun

+1

'89 S4 GP White/Black
'76 912E Silver/Black

Landseer

The irony. Valuation was why the car was there.

safulop

Thanks for the input folks. To make a small correction, Siegfried's Motors (where my car burned up) was performing some deferred maintenance on my car, but they had nothing to do with the upcoming appraisal. That was supposed to be done after the maintenance, by an independent appraiser.

As far as Agreed Value policies, I certainly agree it would be ideal, but I discovered when hunting for better insurance for my 944 that American companies only do these policies on "collector car" low mileage vehicles. As soon you say "daily driver" or "10,000 miles per year" the jig is up, and such a policy is not available for your car.

For my 944 I have a so-called "appraised value" policy with daily driver status and unlimited miles. This supposedly uses my initial appraisal as a baseline, which would aid in the accurate determination of ACV later on in the event of a loss. Naturally it is not helpful unless you keep having your own car appraised at your own expense, probably every 2-3 years. I will likely use the same policy for my 928 or whatever I end up getting.

Emboss

Ouch, that sucks! One of the biggest insurers here in NZ only do agreed value polices. The justification being IIRC that:
A) It removes one of the variables in calculating premiums, so less risk for them.
B) It saves arguments and time (= money) trying to value a car after it has been crushed/burnt/etc.

If you've got a good record, they're quite flexible in what they'll accept as an agreed value as long as you can somewhat justify it. My daily driver is overinsured as it's really not worth much, and the insurance more related to the costs of obtaining a replacement daily driver rather than insuring the car per se. They just see that my demographic tends to write off a car every x years, so the yearly first-party premiums are just (agreed value) / x.

Given that I probably fall into the lowest risk category for everything except age (driven relatively powerful cars for 10+ years, and no tickets or claims ever) they're quite happy to take the increased premiums off me for a higher agreed value

Jerry Feather

I think this thread got side-tracked! All the information about agreed value insurache is interesting and worthwhile on its own, but has almost nothing to do with the OP's original question/topic. If you have agreed value insurance on your car that is an agreement between you and your own insurance company. If your maechanic burns your car down, as here, and you have to deal with his liability insurance company, they are not bound by your agreed value insurance, if you had it, and you are still stuck with this guy's problem. Of course, having agreed value insurance gives you a better place to look for recovery--and that is the only relevance here, if any--but this guy didn't obviously, so he is still stuck with the conventional method of negotiating or litigating his claim.

That aside, I have a small dissertation I could offer this lister, if he desires, but in order to keep it sort of short I need to know more about his car and situation, as follows:

Mileage?

Color?

Sport seats?

Manual or auto?

LSD?

Maintenance records?

What kind of maintenance was the car in for when it was toasted?

Was this mechanic place the same as most or all of the other maintenance had been done?

Jerry Feather

SQLGuy

Not quite. Just to clarify: IF you have insurance on your car (agreed value or not) and someone else's liability insurance is responsible for damages (as here), and you don't like the answers you're getting from their insurance carrier, you can still file a claim through your carrier and have them go after the liability carrier for whatever they can recover.

This is exactly the situation I was in when someone ran over my motorcycle while it was parked in a restaurant parking lot. My insurance carrier called in a speciailized appraiser and came up with a valuation on my bike about 50% higher than that of the liability carrier's. I filed the claim through my agency, had to initially pay the deductible, but got it back eventually when they recovered the full claim from the liability carrier.

Jerry Feather

I agree that that is an additional option. The problem with doing that is that you will have some significant limitations in your own policy on what they will have to pay you to sette your claim with them that you are not bound by against the tort feasor's liability carrier. When your own insurance pays their limited amount to you that plus possibly your deductible is all they will go after the other guy or his insurance for. Look at you own policy and see what is not covered if you total your 928!

Jerry Feather

Jerry Feather

OH, by the way, one other consideration for the OP is to reveal what the documented damage history is on his now burned up car. Jerry

SQLGuy

Given the experience I already have with my carrier in this situation, I'm not too worried. The bike in question is very custom. It's a 1982 Yamaha SECA 750 that I've converted to fuel injection with Microsquirt, junk yard parts, and home-fabricated parts (fuel rail, manifold, etc).

The runner-over's carrier basically said that all that custom work and aftermarket parts were worth 0, as was my time. They would give me craigslist pricing for a similar year and condition SECA 750.

My insurance company brought in an appraiser that dealt with custom and collectible motorcycles and he looked at the bike and at all the build information I had from a project web site I'd put together, and, for him, all the custom parts and work definitely did count.

Jerry Feather

I understood that the first time you said it.

Abby Normal

How can they subtract the maintenance costs? That would be like deducting the tread wear on the tires from the value of the car.

Wasn't this service *preventive maintenance* and not an actual issue with the car itself?

F'n insurance companies. Bastards gladly take your money and then fight you like hell when it's their time to pay.

SQLGuy

Your response that going through the car owner's insurance might be limiting options and recovery made me think we were not on the same page. I already knew what the other company was offering and they weren't budging. They were quite specific in what their justification was, though I didn't agree with it.

I did consult an attorney, who suggested I could sue them for all my costs, plus "lost of use", and the damages. A friend, who is a car loss adjuster for a third insurance company, gave me her opinion that, althought their use of craigslist for valuation wasn't valid, the attorney's opinion wouldn't fly in a Colorado Springs courtroom and I would be unlikely to gain much.

It was my insurance company that suggested bringing in the appraiser. And I didn't have to file the claim before getting the appraisal results. Since the appraiser's numbers sounded reasonable, I then went ahead with the claim through my company.

James Bailey

Ah...."How can they subtract the maintenance costs? That would be like deducting the tread wear on the tires from the value of the car. " And Yes that is exactly what they often will do !!!