Car written off after building materials fell from a truck. Are insurance being reasonable over wanting ‘proof’ of value?

[Pottedpalm]

Car purchased two months ago from reputable garage. Was written off by the insurance company after an accident in which a ladder fell off a van ( 50 mph on dual carriageway) and caused major damage to vehicle. Police attended and driver accepted responsibility. However, insurance company offering less than it was bought for two months ago. If their offer not accepted we are to find examples of the same make/model/ mileage as ‘proof’ of the value.
i think this is unreasonable and actually pretty much impossible to
find such examples.
Any advice?

It’s standard if the pay out isn’t acceptable. But cars can decrease in value very quickly, the dealership would have obviously added to the price to make their money. You could look on auto trader to see if there’s anything on there to send to the insurers.

Yes, we have looked but it’s difficult to find exact matches!

i think this is unreasonable and actually pretty much impossible to
find such examples.

It's absolutely standard in the situation. If you can't find any examples perhaps it's because the car was not worth what you think.

I think this is quite common unfortunately, they use valuation guides I think like market value type thing, this is why people with loans out on cars are generally recommended to have gap insurance

Standard practice and a quick 5 mins on Auto trader or Parkers guide should give you the info you need.
This is why there's a market for gap insurance as vehicles lose money the minute they are driven off a forecourt, more so if they're brand new.

There was a very similar thread on here recently -worth a search. I think standard however with a bit of research you should be able to get them to up it a bit

but this is why my dh insisted on gap insurance

Finding a car of same make/model/mileage is the problem. If the driver/insurance
have accepted liability ( they had to as he will be prosecuted) can our insurance not tell his what figure is acceptable? We have paperwork showing what was paid two months ago.

Before finding out if our car was going to be written off I did a quick auto trader search and used that as part of the discussion with the insurance company - we actually got a good deal but our car was over 10 yrs and had done 90k miles. I would have a look and see how much the dealership inflated their price with what you could get like for like. These conversations are hard but you have to stand your ground.

Might be worth asking the dealership how much they would have sold the car with it being two months older and with x miles on the clock

Thank you; will look up

Make them an offer for the amount you want

I had similar in an insurance claim. It was a pain in the bum finding comparable cars, but it was worth putting in the effort. I had a rare optional leather colour interior, which added ‘value’ to the car and I actually ended up accepting more for the car than I paid for it as I was able to prove that that’s how much it would cost me to put myself back in the same position.

I used eBay and autotrader and filtered down to rough details for my car, and also got book valuations from (I think) 3 different places.

What is special about your car? Optional extras, low miles, rarer features for the model, low miles, full exceptional service history, low previous owners, unusual hard to find colour?

It’s also worth looking up how much your car is worth selling it for spares/repairs/scrap, finding out how much you can buy it off of the insurance company for vs how much you can sell it for. One of my claims I made an extra 1k doing this.

Good luck! If you want to pm me the details of it I’m happy to trawl to see if I can find comparable cars, assuming that’s not too weird 😂

There are some bloody good people in this world. You are one of them.

I managed to get a bit more added to the insurance offer as I had a brand new engine put in a couple of months before. It cost me £700, had all the paperwork and they added £500 to my claim.

Did the insurer give you any leeway with the mileage? I think I had 10k either side

can the OP tell us what make/model/age/miles and features etc and we can all do some trawling for them? It’s hardly too outing. Plus how much money they need

It's normally standard to be need to show prices for the same age/model/mileage cars. However, I think given that you only bought it 2 months ago then you could argue that this is the proof of its value in itself and they should get very close to the price you paid. It hasn't had time to depreciate significantly from what you paid for it!

I think the problem is that you're really wanting full price for the car. The moment you drive the car out of the show room you've given it a huge drop in value.

I remember my grandad deciding within a couple of weeks that the (new) car he bought was unsuitable for his disability, and it went back to be resold having done less than 100 miles, and it still had dropped an amazing amount.

I think you need to begin your argument with asking for full price for a new car, I doubt you'll get it, but start there.
You could try claiming trauma for your pride and joy being damaged too. :)

Try Motorway or Auto Trader to get the car's value. If yours can't be repaired then it doesn't really matter what the value is, ss king as you can genuinely get a replacement.

My dd has been through this process, 3 examples needed, except her insurer was sourcing them and failed so in the end they paid the higher amount dd requested and £500 on top for the delay

A huge thank you to @MuchTooTired who wasn’t too tired to find some great examples. So very kind to go to all that bother for a random poster.

That is standard practice. My car was written off 3 weeks ago.
The assessor got a range of examples of the same car with similar mileage.
There was a variation of €10,000, he put us in the middle.
Cheapest one he found was €20,000, most expensive was €30,000, we were offered €25,000(and accepted it).
We had had the car for 18 months, it was 5 years old and we were claiming off my insurance.