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Totalled my car.
mystic_knight
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I totalled my car today. Basically, I'd like to find out how much I'll be getting from my insurance. It's a 2000 Ford Mustang. I tried using kelley blue book, but I didn't know which value to go by. There's dealership, private and trade-in. I'm really hoping it's not he trade in value, as it hardly covers the deductable.
mystic_knight on
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I totalled a 1998 Kia Sephia 4 years ago and if I remember correctly; I had full coverage as it is required by law if you had a lean on the car, I still owed $1700 on the car. I don't remember what my parents initially paid for the car, I just took over the payments when I took the car and moved out, I think it was just under 10,000. The value of my car at the time of the accident was valued at around $1900-2000. The check I got from the insurance was just enough to pay off the bank and pay my last months insurance bill.
After all was said and done, I had no more car but also no more debt until I bought my truck (2001 Ford Ranger XLT) a month later and went into 13-14k of debt. But hey, it's 4 years later now and I have it paid off and managed not to total it while I owed money.
I'm just pretty stressed out about getting enough cash to get another car.
Unless you're a motor trader (ie. you buy and sell vehicles as part of a business) Pre-accident valuations are based on the Glass's Retail figure, corrected for mileage and any pre-existing damage. Note that you will not necessarily get enough money to replace your car. What you will likely get is the amount that someone would have paid (which is distinct from the sticker price) for the car that's wrecked, were it to hypothetically be on a dealer's forecourt.
In any case, the insurer should be able to tell you how they arrived at any figure they offer you, and your best bet for disputing that figure is by providing evidence that they've made some kind of unreasonable deduction, or that the guide price isn't representative of the true value of the car (Note that in my experience it is exceptionally rare for anyone to successfully argue the latter. The only time I'm aware of it occurring was for a vehicle that was factory-modified as a "1 of 200" special edition).
So, you could end up near that $5,000 figure you mentioned.
When my car was totaled a few years back they were only going to give me 8K. I still had 9k owing on it.
I had very little mileage on it (about 1/2 of what would be considered normal since I worked 4 min away from my house)
I also looked at auto trader for what used ones were going for for the same model.
So going back to them with the proof, I ended up getting 10k instead.
So the couple hours of researching paid off.
Basically, if you have full coverage, you should be getting what it would cost you to go into a used car dealership, and pick up your exact car with similar mileage on it minus your deductible.
You just can't be greedy, the adjuster will know if you are trying to pull a fast one. So do research, and have a hard copy of your research to provide to the adjuster if they think you are full of shit.
Actually, if your claim is being dealt with by the other guy's insurer, they will quite frequently fall over themselves to help you. They're on the hook for the costs anyway, the best outcome they can hope for is that they impress you enough to switch your insurance to them next time you renew.
Also failing to disclose relevant information is just as fraudulent as actively lying as far as the law's concerned
But thanks a lot guys, I feel a lot better about my financial future. The deductible is going to be like $1000, so I won't be able to get another Mustang, but I'm fine with having a different car as long as it has AC, a CD player and gets me to work.
Based on the research on this that I did, you can try to negotiate the amount of money they give, but keep in mind, what they are really doing is "buying" your totaled car from you. It's probably in your best interest to "sell" it without pushing them too far. You can also do some research on your own to see what you can expect for your area - remember you want to look at what cars actually sold for. Once you see their list, you can look at it and see if you want them to take into account what you found to boost the price. You can also eliminate low prices if you feel they don't apply to you - say are from further away, just keep in mind that if there are other prices you like even further away, you would be eliminating them from consideration as well. If you're looking at KBB, I would expect it to end up being somewhere in the private seller range, although with the economy the way it was earlier this year, I found KBB to be somewhat inflated both in the value I got for my car as well as the price of the replacement car I bought.