Car hail damage. Insurance questions.

[Seth1968]

The vehicle is a 2003 Honda Civic Coupe with 200,000 Km.

The damage occurred tonight in Lethbridge. There are hundreds of hail dimples, light scratching, and driver side mirror is smashed.

I'll be calling my insurance company tomorrow, and was wondering what to expect.

I have no problem writing off the car (as I expect this will happen), but I'm guessing they'll try and low ball me.

There's no way this could affect my insurance rate, right?:)

[Modelexis]

-This wont affect your insurance
-they will write it off and allow you to buy it back and continue to drive it

If you choose to buy back, they will write you a check for the payout minus the buy back and you will leave and you do not need to have a safety inspection done.

You just cannot claim anything else after that point, the insurance is essentially void unless someone smashes into you.

This happened to my shitty car last year and I got $1300 after buy back and still drive it to this day as a winter beater. The purchase price was 2900$ so I did good on that car.

I even got a discount on the buy back because it wasn't worth their time to call a tow truck for it.

[Seth1968]

Thanks for the reply Modelexis. That all makes sense, but one last question for now.

They give me book value, but how is the buy back price determined?

[Modelexis]

Not sure, but I'm guessing is a percentage of the book value.
Some insurance agent will have to speak on that topic.

For my car I think it was like 200$

[Seth1968]

The gf just called our broker. She said it's a $250.00 deductible, and they'll pay to fix the dents with the "suction cup" method.

The gf then had to call intact, who said that if the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the car, then we would get blue book value and the car would be scrapped.

What?

[dirtsniffer]

They don't know what they're talking about.

First thing, open a claim for hail damage. they will do an estimate, either an insurance appraiser or someone else who is qualified. If the damage is worth more than the car they will write it off and pay you the value. This value isn't book value, it's fair market value, find out how much your car is worth, sometimes it's a struggle to get what you deserve, but it will work out in the end.

If you want to keep the vehicle, they will write it off and give you a payment, you can use a portion of that to buy the vehicle back, either directly or through an auction if it goes that route.

If you do buy it back there will be a hail claim on the vehicle and no further hail claims will be accepted in the future.

If the damage isn't great enough to write the vehicle off it will be repaired, you may or may not have to pay the deductible.

:hitit:

Personally, I would think it's a write off.
My guess is they will offer you around 3000.

you could say give me 3000 and the car because this civic is for sale with xxx damage for $xxxx and a good condition example is selling for $xxxx. Basically they would need to make up the difference in costs.

You should be able to squeeze 4500 out of them. Also, as Tomco has mentioned, a large amount of hail damage is hard to fix with PDR.

[Seth1968]

Thanks for that dirtsniffer.

The car goes in for assessment on Aug 17th.

[Masked Bandit]

Originally posted by Seth1968
The gf just called our broker. She said it's a $250.00 deductible, and they'll pay to fix the dents with the "suction cup" method.

The gf then had to call intact, who said that if the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the car, then we would get blue book value and the car would be scrapped.

What?

Something's off there?

As in any auto claim, there will be an estimate to determine the cost to fix the damage. If the cost to repair exceeds (depending on the company) 75% or more of the MARKET value of the vehicle, it will be written off. A write off is essentially a forced sale to the insurance company. Blue Book, Black Book, Jimmy the Bookie...none of that stuff comes into play. You are paid based on current market value. Do a bit of research to see what you could have actually sold the car for the day before the loss. Then you'll know if the insurance company's offer is reasonable. If it's low you can negotiate with them, this is not a once sided discussion. However you have to be able to support your arguement for a higher value by showing legitimate comparables for sale in your are (Alberta). I recently had my travel trailer written off, the opening offer was $6700 but after showing them a few (more accurate) comparables, we settled on $8500.

As for the buy back angle, I really can't speak to that. I've never been through it and most of our clients don't bother. However in your case with the damage being just cosmetic you could easily pocket some cash and keep driving the car as a beater.

[guessboi]

My suzuki was written off by hail in 2011. Intact offered me

Option 1
Total Writeoff = negoitation for the current market value

Option 2 which I took so I can use it as a beater.
Writeoff but you get to keep car
Reimbursement will be the agreed actual cost value less 35% (this % will be different depending on the agreed value) + $250 (my comprehensive deductible)

Hope this helps.

[bastardchild]

Don't let them scam you and give you shitty black book value for the car. The chances are they will try to rip you off. You have to be firm with insurance. If you can sell the car (with no hail damage) for $5000 they should give you close to that number and not some lowball book value.

[tentacles]

One of my cars has a claim for hail damage, but it's proceeding quite slowly and my appointment for the evaluation is on wednesday, my question: since the claim is in, once it's been assessed by the PDR folks, can I go ahead and sell the car? I would imagine that the claim would still proceed as normal and at the end they would just do it the same way as if I had bought the car back, can anyone confirm?

I know I can call them but it's sunday and I want everything noooow because I am a big baby :nut: