My wifes car was $20,000 used back in 2019. Now after basically 10 years it gets hit. The insurance declares it totalled. So the car can’t be legally driven. The insurance will only pay us $9000. But now we’re trying to buy a replacement and for the same model year they are asking 16000!
WTF! What’s insurance for? Its just a tax. I much rather save to pay for my own car and have some sort of insurance that really actually covers the other driver.
Farmer this and state farm that and whatever General lizard, all are total bullshit regardless if you caused the accident or if you’re are the victim.
They should call it “pay slightly less than full price if you fucked up your car”
Just here to commiserate. I am currently dealing with a total loss settlement myself.
I hope you, your wife, and any other involved parties are well.
Lastly, if you are an American, do NOT settle medical claims. You have a long time to figure that all out and the insurance company wants to give you as little as they can possibly get away with and what ever you sign is the final amount they will help with. In Texas, you have 2 years to settle bodily injury claims. Take the time you need before you settle.
You are probably too late as you have likely signed an agreement to take the money, but you could have sent those comparison vehicles to the insurance company as proof of value. Insurance companies hire appraisers (like Mitchell) to put a value on your car when it is a total loss … they work for the insurance company.
Also, you can (could have) attempt to dispute the total loss or having your car “totalled” and force a repair instead. The insurance company looks at a cost benefit analysis when it determines that it is cheaper to total your car. So they look at their own appraisal of your vehicle to determine if they should repair it or total it.
Every state in the US gas laws regarding this cost benefit analysis, you DO NOT legally have to take a “low ball” offer … but the whole system is rigged on the “neutral” total loss appraiser keeping the numbers low and also making sure appraisal numbers fall in line with KBB and the like.
Solution: Get your own local comparison vehicles and ask to see theirs. Request a specialty appraisal if they didn’t pull comp vehicles. Make sure the comps are LOCAL, if the use comps from other states they can find abberant vehicle prices.
The hopefully only car I’ll ever total was about 20 years ago. I bought it for 7k and drove it for 5 years. They initially lowballed me at like 3k. I was able to show them Kelly blue book values and current used market it was closer to 6. Ended up getting a little over 5k.
Of course in the 5 years since I got the car the used market was nothing like it previously was. A comparable purchase would have been 12k not 7k.
Did you talk to the insurance adjuster to increase their payout?
What they first offer you is just that, an offer. You can absolutely come back and say fuck off the car is worth more you just need to be able to provide proof.
They try and pay as little as possible. Never take their first offer.
My car was totaled recently. Fucking loved that car. They first offered me 19k for it. I found similar cars for sale for 24k. Same year. Same trim, close miles. They argued that what I see is the listing price not what they actually sold for.
I told them to fuck off 19k will not buy me a replacement and if they can find me a similar car that a dealer will actually sell for 19k locally I will take the 19k. Took them a week to come back to me and they offered me 22k. I told them I just put new tires on the car and gave receipts from a month ago. They upped it to 23k. +Tax and title.
Point is, it’s a nagitiation. They will try and screw you if they can. Don’t let them
Also. They owe you for taxes. That’s IN ADDITION to the value of the car. So if they say the car is 20k according to them. Make sure you are getting roughly 21.5k from them.
Hail messed up my paint and the insurance company wanted to total my car. It’s well maintained and still worth $11-13K. No way was I doing that. Found a place that would paint it for me at a cheaper price & paid out of pocket. I just need my car to take me to & from work.
If the car is still drivable, there are work arounds to still being able to drive a totaled car. When the insurance totals a vehicle, it just means that the repairs are more expensive than the value of the car. You may have to get a salvage title and assume ownership of the vehicle from the insurance. They’ll also still give you the money for the car. If the accident wasn’t your fault, also beware of the other persons insurance trying to settle with you. When I was in my 20s and young and dumb, I had that happen to me. The other persons insurance adjuster literally came to my apartment to negotiate a settlement with me and I took it because I was broke.
The only thing that will fix that is “like for like” replacement coverage. Some insurances offer this, and of course it costs more, but if your older car gets wrecked and it only has a value of say $7,000 with 80,000 miles the insurance company will have to replace your car with the same model and mileage. Not sure what they do with older cars that might be harder to find replacements for.
Probably get you a car of similar make and age. Or maybe a never one worth aproximately the same.
Just watched someone explain this but it was about house insurance. When you sign up they give you a replacement dollar amount. Should your house burn to the ground they deduct money from that amount due to depreciation.
That’s true, but that depreciation is often recoverable. That deducted amount is paid out when you repair or replace the damage.
Cars don’t work like that though, OP should fight the valuation unless they left out critical information like a $5,000 deductible.
LOL, yet you can’t buy a depreciated house can you? No, cuz there are none. Even a burnt down place represents a mortgage-able amount of money. That’s the lie. There’s no depreciation, they just want to pay you less as time goes on. At least for a house anyway.
That’s basically untrue. If a building is rotten and full of mold, then it might have to be torn down before anything new could be created. Then it might have negative value, but the property itself could still have a lot of value.
Okay let me find a negative value property around my neighborhood… None! Could it be a get rich quick loophole? Nope.
Negative value property? Easy. It’s called a timeshare!
Doesn’t make his claim untrue, just an exception.
One thing to keep in mind is that the used car market is fucked right now because of the tariffs. You’re going to pay a premium for any used car from a dealership for the next long while.
My advice? Get a gray title on the car and sell it to someone who will fix it up. I hit a deer with my old 99 contour, and the insurance adjuster totaled it because my back seat was messy (I wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t said it to my face; the whole story is a trip). They gave us $2400 for it, we kept the car, and sold it to a family friend for $1200 because it just needed new headlight assemblies. We only paid $1200 for it in the first place, but my step dad knew the dealer and got it for what he paid.
I bought a 98 Contour for $275 about 15 years ago (tweaker really needed pills) and immediately drove it 900 miles one way. Once I was at my destination I heard coolant boiling in the head. Drove it another year until the tensioner broke on my way home from work. Kept driving cuz I had funds for my next vehicle already saved. Engine no longer had compression by the time I was about a mile from home. RIP little shitbox. Best $275 ever. Scrap yard gave me $200.
That thing was a Ford fluke. I drove mine 20k miles after I got it without charging the oil, and it never complained. The fucker actually got more fuel efficient the longer I drove it. Ended up somewhere like 32 city.
I miss it
LOL my first car was really old. I bought it for 2k and I sold it for 2k like seven years later. But that only works if you know how to work on cars and have a good grip on maintenance. It was my first car and I did a lot of stupid things on it. Fixing it was a fun time. But I’m old now. I can’t have my wife not have a car. Specially I wouldn’t want to have car problems here in the PNW during a rainy or cold winter. In winter time you can walk a few blocks without freezing. But the grocery store is a good hour and a half downhill walk. Another 2 hours walking uphill with heavy shopping bags, that’s a nope. One day there will be a tram nearby to help us. But not today.
One time I was talking with an online friend from the general region and I got to experience freezing his ass off while waiting for a bus…from the comfort of my home. Worse 30 minutes ever for him. Winters are no joke here. I don’t understand how homeless people even survive over winter…you known, people who used to have a home, buy then one day they lost their car and got fired for not showing up to work. It hits home like that.
I got a plan ready last week to order a bunch of stuff from china. I was so happy to put it all to work on Monday. But nah! Friday tariff boy had to 120% my purchase. WTF! To the max.
Well, yeah, but in this case you’d be selling it to someone who will fix it.
To be salty: you seem kinda bad at math.
2019 was.six years ago, not “basically ten”. Which wouldnt matter, if the rest of your post didn’t have such “if the raise put me in the next tax bracket I’d actually lose money” energy.
Car insurance is typically for the market value of your car as-s. Not the price for a car from the same model year that has a dealer’s warranty behind it.
Or to put it another way: insurance should pay out the amount you could get if you sold your car, not the cost to buy another similar car.
Now, there are insurance companies that will sell you “replacement cost” insurance, but this always means they’re charging a higher premium than they otherwise would.
And you’re absolutely right that insurance companies categorically suck. Auto insurance is actually the friendliest one that regularly has to pay out. Health insurance is even worse.
(Sorry for being so salty.)
Or to put it another way: insurance should pay out the amount you could get if you sold your car, not the cost to buy another similar car.
Why would an insurance company think that OP would get less money selling the car than anyone else would get selling the same kind of car, though? It’s one thing if all the listings are for much higher prices, but if those listings are selling at that price, then that’s the market value and the insurance company is provably misunderestimating.
Same model year doesn’t mean same condition.
A used car with lower mileage, documented service history, and a dealer warranty is worth a lot more than one without those things.
But also OP is right insurrance will generally offer the least they think they can get away with.
Its OK to be salty. I like my beans salty, lemony and spicy. I’m not saying you’re a bean and I want to eat you in a burrito. I’m just saying you’re alright.
Idk why people jump to defend these policies. They are 100% correct, but being correct doesn’t negate how scummy the insurance companies are. Based on how much we pay on a monthly basis, you would think we should be appropriately compensated when we do need to use the insurance. The simple fact is that the devil is in the details.
The minimum insurance isn’t a scam. If you hit someone and cripple them you’ll be glad for insurance to pay their medical etc…
Comprehensive is absolutely a scam. Just take the money and save it, maybe buy some bonds. Then when it’s time to buy a new car (or when you get your car totaled) you’re already half way to a new car.
It might be worth it if you have a Jeep for the glass replacement alone, though
Cars totally suck by the way. We went to a dealership to see one of the trade-in used cars and the 20 minute trip turned into a 4 hour car ride in stop and go traffic.
Cars suck, Seattle traffic sucks, insurance sucks. One word of advice… Don’t come to Seattle. If you do, don’t bring a car there. That’s the only saving Grace about Seattle, there’s no parking. To fix the traffic problem simply close the streets going to downtown.
Yeah definitely need a well named insurance… “Pay little” or maybe “screw everyone” insurance. Sorry, just being salty about it.
Shut up, nerd!
Insurance isn’t a joke, it’s a giant scam. Their entire business model is to give you less than you put in. And they make insane amounts of money doing it. No choice though, as it is basically legally required to exist in society.
Insurance being a negative expected value isn’t the scam. Insurance not paying for the thing you bought the insurance to pay for is the scam. They’re supposed to be working from the same agreement you’re working from, not some other one they made up that’s worse for you at random.
Most insurance companies see very slim margins, it’s just that even slim profits stack when you have millions of customers.
Plus, they have to put fat money in the bank to covers disasters. Problem being, after too many disasters they pull out of your state (America). I don’t know the fix. I don’t want to pay for California wildfires anymore than they want to pay for our hurricanes. I see a global warming future where we won’t be able to get insurance unless it’s a crappy government deal.
Hell, maybe that will be better. At least the government has to follow the rules they set, can’t wiggle out of payments like private enterprise.
At least the government has to follow the rules they set, can’t wiggle out of payments like private enterprise.
Oh my sweet summer child.
LOL, I get you! But at the day-to-day bureaucrat level, there’s no, “Let me talk to your manager!” The rules are the rules, no matter if they’re insane in your particular case, the bureaucrat cannot make exceptions. Which is my pet theory as to why so many hate the government.
Sometimes the rules are just dumb.
Ooh I’ve got a couple fun “fucking bureaucracy” stories with the MA RMV and the RI DMV…
I bought a car in MA in 2014. Lived in RI at the time. Registered it in RI, paid RI sales tax at the dealer to register it. As one does. You cannot register a car without paying the tax.
Owned it for 4 or 5 years when I moved to MA. When I tried to register it here, they wanted me to pay sales tax on the original purchase price in MA. That’s the law, unless I could prove that I paid RI sales tax.
“It was registered in RI by the dealer, ipso facto I must’ve paid tax” wasn’t enough. I needed a form from the dealer.
I had my original paperwork all in a file at home. None of the documents were what they were looking for.
The dealership was still there, but had changed hands in the interim. I called every day for like 2 weeks trying to see if they could find the form. “We will give you a call in the morning”. I had to call them in the afternoon because they never called me.
Eventually, I’m pretty sure they just forged the form to get me to stop calling them. Whatever, it was enough to let me register the car without paying tax on a 6 year old car, based on the value of when it was 1 year old.
When I was a teen, my dad bought an old Datsun off some guy off Craigslist as a project car. It wasn’t even in one piece. It was immobile, hadn’t been started in years. Squirrel den. Came with about 3 pallets stacked a good 4-5 feet high full of parts.
It was an antique (by state law, 25 years old) when he bought it. I’m pretty sure when we bought it, the law was that cars over 10 years old could be registered without a title. I may be mistaken.
This car…did not have a title. And it was not at all road-worthy, so registering it was never on his radar.
We worked on it for quite a while over the course of…probably a couple of years. Eventually got it quite road worthy and street legal and looking quite good.
By the time we went to register it, though, the title was now needed. The bill of sale from prior to that law didn’t matter. Title was necessary.
The guy that he bought the car from was dead. Like, actually dead, we tried to track him down to see if possibly he had it, and all we could find was his obit.
So now he has this car with a couple of years of our blood, sweat, and tears in it…and the DMV is saying it can’t be driven.
I’m not really sure how he ended up resolving that. I think he just shared his story with enough of his circle (pre-Facebook) that he found “a guy who knows a guy” who helped him grease the right palms. Typical Rhode Island.
Something similar happened to me, luckily I had decided to get the gap insurance, that makes the difference.
Gap insurance is just you gambling on a tiny down payment. The house always wins.
Yeah… gap insurance is for when you pay more than the car is worth. So, the dealership. If you get a car from the dealership, you will pay more than Kelly blue book value. Example: car is 10k kbb, dealership will sell it to you for 14k because of BS. If you wreck the car the next day, insurance will pay you what the car is worth -the kbb-, so 10k. But now you are still on the hook and making payments on the 4k. This exactly what gap insurance is for and will cover the 4k gap. This exactly happened to me. They kinda snuck in the gap insurance but im glad they did.
Your example assumes zero down payment, so yes.
But if your down payment had been 4k, gap would not have paid out. It’s only what you owe, not what you paid.
What do you mean ‘the insurance’? The other parties insurance, right? They usually have to provide an equivalent replacement, accepting a payment should be your choice. Dont know what its like in your specific case though.
When it’s totaled, then you get a cash payoff for what they declare it to be worth. It being the other person’s insurance does give you a bit more leverage than is it were your own.
At least in my case, I was able to negotiate a bit and got the other person’s insurance to at least go up to paying the blue book retail for mint condition of the car. They also tossed in a few thousand for pain and suffering and covered a full month of rental car. In my case someone in the other car was unresponsive and needed an ambulance ride, and on my part I had been very thorough in documenting everything that legally would count including damaged contents in the trunk, missed work, and other things.
However ultimately it is a check and car sales can be rough. So it may be that they were underpaid, or that the car’s general book value didn’t match their subjective value for the car, or they were thinking they should get what they paid for it. I could imagine if they bought a 2015 in 2019, they were probably getting a decent, off lease practically new car. Now they have a check appropriate for buying a 2015 of the same make and model and the 2015s now available are in worse shape than they kept their own, previous owners that neglected their car over a longer period.
Yeah the other party’s insurance is like, well here’s 9000 bucks for your car. So it means that if you’re driving a passenger van you can get hit by some idiot and then end up driving your family in a beat up mini cooper! Yey! You know, because your van is old. Its your fault that you have chosen to ride something affordable vs wanting to pay a car mortgage like a smart person.
Insurance covers damage to the other party if you were at fault, any medical issues. To only see its value for taking care of your own car and nothing else is short sighted and ignorant.
That’s only liability insurance, though.
Not true if you are in a no fault state. In Florida, diesn matter who’s at fault…you go through your own insurance and bear the coat of increased premiums …even if its 100% other guts fault.
Had a car totalled. 2018 elantra. Ins gave me 8k, black book value… But a replacement could not be found for less than 17k for same model, blue book value+dealer profit shit.
Wtf.
So it sounds like your insurance company is trying to game the system. This isn’t necessarily a problem with insurance as a concept, it’s just something that happens because private companies are greedy m************.
It’s okay you can say motherfuckers.
Mother truckers?
