They're offering me ?300.

you all might have read few weeks ago, about my mum hitting my car, well it got me ?1100 worth of damage to the rear quater. insurance man has inspected it and offered 250, now 300! this is ridiculous! its fully comp, they should have an obligation to pay for the damage, thats what insurers are there for!! anyone had this trouble? any way i can blag more money out of them? its a classic car for petes sake! worth more than 300 pounds! i had it valued at 1500! im not havin it writ off but i need enough money to fix it. any advice guys?

cheers
Greg :wink:

Who you insured with?
Did you have an agreed value policy with certificate? This is a must have these days as by the book, Mk1's are only worth a couple hundred quid!

I would dig through the free ads, auto trader etc. and find cars similar to yours in similar condition, and see what they are selling for, then print these off and offer it as evidence to the insurance company that it is worth more than they are offering.

Mike.

its coming off my mums insurance (norich union), so its their call. no, dont you need a classic policy for that?, and im too young for one. they should pay for the damage on the car, i just dont think its fair to give a miniscule pay out for something which has a clear significant value to the owner. i cant afford to repair it, and im no way seeing it scrapped off. Mike, they must know the cars worth more, common sense should tell them that, should be recognised as a classic! good idea, thanks, ill do a search on here too.

Greg :wink:

I'd be getting the money of your mum to be honest, If she has any regret she'd pay up asap. If I drove into my mum and dads car I'd expect to have to pay. You could get the cost down by going to a few other garages, If your mum has not got the cash get her to pay the bill by credit card :evil:
 
If you do go through with the claim be prepaired for a long hard battle to get any decent money for your car. You need to go armed with as much proof of it value as possible. A letter from the club wouldn't go a-miss here

its through my mums, so i might as well get what money i can out of them. hers has damage too so insurance was the only way really, just created an awful ammount of agro for me. letter from the club? how would i go about getting one of those?

Greg

Go and grab a copy of the Classic Car Magazine as in the Classic Car value section the MK1 GTI is listed and I'm sur eits got higher value then ?300. If its listed on here then its worth flashing ths at them as well. :wink:

Hi, i paid 777 quid for a 83 mk1 diesel,spent about 600 on it,the cars only worth 400-500 quid but its not the value for me,i dont want to sell it for a profit i will keep it forever,but in the insurances eyes its an old golf and worthless,but to me it is irreplaceable  :wink:
Bert

yeah, those things go off age value too. saying a mk2 is worth about ?3-4000 and the mk1 is worth 1200 mint! theyre not right atall, other way round, mk2's dont have the same value as the mk1, iv seen them for less than ?100 tax and tested! 8O

Bert, thats exactly how i feel about mine. i wonder where they draw the line between old and classic then, because according to their logic a 100 year old ford t4 will only be worth pennies!!

Greg

Its something I've been thinking about for the while. It could be worth someone taking this on and offering a reliable 'valuation' service to members. Basically, what it would entail is monitoring eBay, this site, Autotrader, etc and trying to find out the actual sale price of as many Mk1 Golfs as possible. Then building up a database with all the detail on the cars, eg model, year, mileage, condition etc and then being able to accurately predict, from real data, a typical market price for the car.

An official valuation based on these principles, from the 'official' owner's club, would have a lot of weight with the insurers. Also, it would have other advantages, for example you could enquire on the price to set your car when selling; or use the guide to 'beat down' sellers who advertise with hugely optimistic prices.

Unsure if someone's run this past Drew in the past?

insurance companys will write anything off now . a mate picked up a w reg saxo vtr that was a write off for 850quid. only had a 15cm dent in the rear quarter and a scuffed bumper . got it motd again pushed out the dent and uses it for work. they class it as uneconomical repair or somethin  :dontknow:  i call it stupid

pual_c said

building up a database with all the detail on the cars, eg model, year, mileage, condition etc and then being able to accurately predict, from real data, a typical market price for the car.

Sounds like a good idea to me - ?300 is way off the mark any way you look at it, but this would make it a whole lot easier to prove.

Thegreg said

so i might as well get what money i can out of them

Absolutely! The trick with these people is never to accept what they give you. If you keep refusing what they offer, they will offer you more. Don't give in until you feel that you have a good deal… Worked for me  8)

HTH

Rich

yeah it is stupid i know. my mate had his 01 corsa written off for a cylinder head gasket leaking coolant out, madness! these cars are so common though, i cant replace mine so easily. :cry:

Greg

mcscrew said

pual_c said

building up a database with all the detail on the cars, eg model, year, mileage, condition etc and then being able to accurately predict, from real data, a typical market price for the car.

Sounds like a good idea to me - ?300 is way off the mark any way you look at it, but this would make it a whole lot easier to prove.

Thegreg said

so i might as well get what money i can out of them

Absolutely! The trick with these people is never to accept what they give you. If you keep refusing what they offer, they will offer you more. Don't give in until you feel that you have a good deal… Worked for me  8)

HTH

Rich

I know Crazyquiff has a price guide, although I'm unsure of the info behind it. So I don't want to pull the rug under his feet! The suggestion basically is, that if you can enhance it with documented evidence (eg you could make a reference to a similar car which actually sold) and also produce 'official' letters of valuation with the club logo on it, then it going to carry much more weight with insurers, etc.

this happened to me about 10 years ago someone wrote my gti off and insurance offered me ?300. so i wrote them a polite letter stating that i never asked there client to write my car off and for me to replace the car on a like for like basis would cost me about ?2000, i also sent them adverts from the autotrader, vw/audi car and a letter from a local vw/audi specialist stating the pre accident value and low and behold we settled on ?1800 with me keeping the car.
hope this helps

Might be worth taking legal advice.

I know one of the guys on CGTI insisted his car was repaired costing around 2.5k IIRC, even though the insurance company wanted to write it off.

Could you try threatening this?

Sorry to hear about your woes with the insurance company  :cry: . Rajan (dubboy) has put together a really good price guide based on prices cars are actually selling for, and lets face it he has seen a few Mk1's   , so I suspect its pretty much on the mark pricewise.

Not sure if this is the latest version (PM him to check), but there is a copy in this thread:

http://www.vwgolfmk1.o…asc&highlight=price+guide

As others have said its CRUCIAL that you don't accept these initial offers, as insurers will always offer low in the hope you will accept. You need to gather as much proof of sale prices of similar cars as you can. I would suggest ebay completed sales, adverts from the For Sale section on here and other veedub sites.

I know you mentioned your age as a problem with classic policies, but I can't emphasise enough the importance of agreed value policies for Mk1's. Its the only way you will get anywhere near a realistic value for your car if the worst happens without too much hassle.

Not wanting to speak for Drew here, but I think it would be worth dropping him a PM / email as club chairman to ask if he would drop a short letter / email out with a more realistic value range for your model and age of car.

I know a valuation service has been discussed before and I suspect something along these lines will appear at some stage.

The other thing I would suggest is approaching Footman James as they I believe are now offering a club discount? They may be able to find you a classic policy with lower age restriction as you are a club member - worth a try at any rate.

Have you had any quotes done yourself for how much the work will cost to have done? If not I would suggest doing that. As long as the bodyshell is not distorted, then a bit of panelwork shouldn't be too pricy, especially if you are willing to do some of the prep work yourself.

I suspect your Mum might be better off paying for that direct rather than claiming and seeing a hike in her premium?

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers,

Chris

State your price.

State the facts.

Give evidence.

Ask your insurance company to apply preasure on your behalf.

Speek to the insurance omburdsman.

State that if the car is written off, and if the car is not to be retained, that ther e will be  a storage an handeling charge of ?25 per day starting from the date the claim was submitted. ( you are within your rights to do this if they leave the damaged vehicle on your property )

TT

I'm sure I read an article in which? magazine which stated that an insurance company had the legal obligation to pay up enough for you to replace your car with a similar one. so if it would cost ?3000 for you to get a similar car, similar condition, similar milage then thats what they have to pay. The guy in the article armed with this info found 3 ads for cars that were similar, and he got the insurance to cough up.
I'm pretty certain I've remembered this correctly, but please confirm with which? mag, or insurance ombudsman etc.