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scmn | When I totaled the wife's car (I hit a deer) the insurance company found comparable vehicles (4 comps) and assigned each one a value. They then adjusted the value based on differences in mileage and options. I managed to locate all 4 comps that the insurance company used and contacted the dealers to get a bottom dollar straight out price from the dealers; coincidentally, the dealers straight out price matched the insurance companies value and was 90% of asking price on the cars with less than 100,000 miles and 92% of asking on the cars with over 100,000 miles. Only one dealer did not match and they were 10% less than the other comparable and do not negotiate on price. I asked insurance to throw it out and provided 3 other similar comps showing the non-negotiable dealer was already at bottom dollar. They threw out that comp and used the remaining 3 comps, adjusted for mileage and options to get an average value.
We got close to what we paid after putting 24,000 miles on the car. It helped that we had a base car with few options in a model that typically had lots of options (leather, sunroof, deluxe AC, radio, etc); the insurance amounts for options was way lower than one would expect and that helped us since we had a basic model, had we had a fully loaded model we would probably not been as happy with the settlement. | |
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totaled car value
