Vehicle total loss

[parris]

My friend's car was involved in an accident (her fault) and it has been declared total loss by her Insurance company. My friend's insurer has asked her to forward to them all the paperwork relating to the car including car repair receipts, purchase receipt etc. How old do these receipts have to be? The car is Ford Focus, 1.8 engine, reg V, app. 48000 miles. How much could she expect to receive in settlement from the insurer?

parris Tue 01/04/08 18:49

[Toureman]

Whatever settlement she gets don't accept it always say the car is worth more than they offer, they will try to pay out as little as possible.

Look through Autotrader for the same car and quote higher prices.

[parris]

Thanks for your reply. My friend is having difficulties finding receipts as she doesn't think that she has kept them all. Would that affect her claim in any way?

[gouldc]

With all due respect here, this is one of those fantastic myths that's up there along with no MOT invalidates your insurance.

Insurers are bound by the Financial Ombudsman Service to offer the market value of the vehicle - to do this, we are obliged to use Glass's Guide.

In the event that we have a more specialised vehicle (ie Porsche or even an M3), then we'd check Autotrader as the guide can be out by miles.

By all means dispute the valuation, but you have to suplpy evidence that the value placed on your vehicle by the insurer is incorrect - bear in mind that we use independent engineers a lot, and the FOS will accept their valuations.

The idea is to provide you with enough funds (after the excess has been deducted) to buy an identical vehicle - we all know you can easily find adverts showing the same model going for stupid amounts, but if your insurer can find adverts to support their figures, you're not going to gain anything.

Now this isn't to say you shouldn't dispute the valuation, but rather to do some research first - like I say, if cars are available for the amount they've offered, why the hell should they pay you more?