Looking for wisdom and experience. Car was rear-ended, thankfully no one was badly injured. But the car was deemed a total loss. After some back-and-forth, the insurance company of the person that hit us, has given their final valuation, which is based on actual cash value vs replacement. To buy a similar car with similar mileage, their value is at least $1000 low.
The used car market is crazy high right now with limited availability... I had pretty low miles, which makes it hard to get good comps.
So the question is... what are my options and what have you done in this situation? The insurance company has moved a little on the value, but they seem set after multiple reviews.
IME, you're pretty much SOL on a small claim like that.
DS totaled his car when a deer jumped out in front of him on his way home from second shift in Oct 2021. His insurer fairly quickly determined it was a total loss. 2016 Kia Forte LX with 51k miles. Repair estimate was $9,745. Salvage value was $1,901.
His insurer was Ohio Mutual. Horrible company. Actual cash value coverage.
They use an outfit called CCC for valuation and provided us with a slick looking 11-page "CCC One Market Valuation Report". The average value of the 3 comps adjusted for equipment differences and mileage of $14,762 was reasonably close to the average retail value of $14,575 for the VIN with actual mileage on Black Book Weekly. Trade in value was $11,455.
Where our major disagreement arose is that they then dinged the value by $1,231 or 8.3%. In the CCC report it is referred to as a "Condition" adjustment with a superscript 1, suggesting a footnote... but no footnote. Meanwhile, they have a whole page of seven Condition Adjustments, all of which are $0 and a total for that page of Total Condition Adjustments of $0. So why the $1,231 reduction in value I ask.
The $1,231 is intended to adjust the retail value to a private party value. However, neither CCC nor Ohio Mutual could provide any details on how the $1,231 was calculated so I couldn't determine whether it reflected a reasonable private party value adjustment or not, but the fact that they essentially refused to provide any rationale or support for the adjustment was frustrating.
Anyway, we went back and forth forever, even to the point of filing a complaint with the NH Dept of Insurance, but they were equally useless.
Agent that sold DS the policy really doesn't get involved in claim valuation, only in notifying the company of claims and then the company takes it from there so they were not helpful either.
Considered a lawyer, but it wasn't worth the effort for $1,231 and we wanted to be done and move on so we accepted their offer. I was under the impression that insurance adjusters had some lattitude to negotiate but Ohio Mutual's assertion was that it was the CCC Report amount come hell or high water so the adjuster added no value at all. We settled for $13,806 which was a value for the car of $13,531 (CCC value of $14,762 less $1,261 private party value adjustment that they never explained how they calculated it .. take it or leave it) plus a $275 DMV fee which I think was intended to cover tax, title and registration (remember NH has no sales tax).
What we did do however is once we received the settlement check in late March 2022 we cancelled the policy retroactive to the accident date of Oct 29, 2021 since at that point DS was using my car temporarily since we were in Florida. When he replaced the car in May 2022 he went with a different insurer.
The other thing is that since we were pissed and unhappy with them we stretched it out with appeals and refusing to agree as long as we could so the pricks had to pay for storage... we settled just before we would have had to start paying for storage. I'm not sure what storing the wreck while we tried to get more out of them cost them, but I suspect that it was a good chunck of what they refused to negotiate. 90 days at $10/day would be $910.
Ohio Mutual sucks.
....-value of the car is $14K based on my research. So $1K would be ~7% of the value. Personally, I shouldn’t have to pay a nickel of my own money since the accident was not my fault. I’m already spending $$$$ in the form of my time dealing with this ...
But the unfortumate reality is that you didn't have replacement coverage, you had actual cash value coverage. The $14k is replacement value, what it would cost you to replace the car that was totaled. They'll contend that they owe you what you could sell it for in a private party sale so the 7% ding is about right given our experience
