It’s been more than a month. If you haven’t already called your insurer, I think you should.
I did call them. They are not required to act for us in this matter, because we didn’t have collision insurance.
If you can’t get it repaired for less than $6000, then i think your best bet is to accept that it’s totaled. Maybe it’s worth a little more than that because it has a brand new battery, and the typical one has an old battery. But it’s still basically an old car of little value.
Oh, wait, you said it’s still drivable. Is it still street legal? Would it pass inspection?
You ought to be able to find a shop that will pull out the metal and stick some touch-up paint on it, maybe replace a headlight… if that’s your preference. But i think you need to find that place, before you decide what to do next.
But you need to be able to make it legal to drive for comfortably under $6000 for it to be worth trying to keep it. Otherwise, i think you are stuck accepting their valuation that it was totaled.
Yeah, they have no interest in the matter. Not their problem.
If you have a private agent, they might have advice. I dunno. I’ve never worked with a private insurance agent.
Being completely cynical in this matter, the adjuster (unless they have personal metrics which are less common for Total Loss scenarios) doesn’t have any reason or incentive to play games.
IF the comps are as reported, they’ve determined that the repairs would be somewhere between 200 to 600% of the vehicles value. Using general industry guidelines they likely would have totaled it at 80-90% of it’s value as I said earlier.
From their POV they are done. Their obligation is to recover the device and pay you the full value (which you have the right to request) of the vehicle, or pay you the (value - salvage) where you keep the vehicle.
Not much left is actionable against them from their POV. They’ve almost certainly done the minimum they are required to do under the law.
NO mention made of the stress, pain and frustration you have to put up with of course. But they don’t quantify that.
As for overinflating the cost of repairs… I personally doubt it. I do expect the repair estimate is on the higher side - they budget for a full repair of all the damages covered in the loss, not just “what would it take to pass inspection” - because if they did, they’d be opening a can of worms.
Ditto for the shop - if they did a partial repair, and something happened later, and you claimed it was related to the physical damage they did or didn’t fix, then they could be on the hook for it.
You have all my personal sympathy, and if the comps v. repair were even close to even, you might have a shot. 200%-600%? I don’t think you have any reasonable chance.
You do have the right to ask for exact numbers. Tell them you want to see the comps, their tow and pay option, and what your payout would be if you kept the vehicle with a salvage title.
Take the numbers, and see if you can find a shop that thinks they can get the vehicle to be safely inspected and road safe if probably quite ugly. It may not be possible. But GET those numbers. If the comps are invalid (too old, too far away, not taking into account like kind and quality) you may be able to dicker for a bit more. But probably not enough.
Me, too. Fully repairing a car with body damage is astonishingly expensive, even if you use aftermarket or used parts.
I’ve asked a shop to make a car drivable, legal, and functional. (I had been rear-ended, and the trunk didn’t open.) They did a nice job for far less than the cost of “repairing” the car. I kept the car, got a salvage title, drove it for a few more years, and ultimately sold it to an acquaintance (with a very long list of everything i knew to be wrong with the car) who drove it into the ground and was happy with that transaction.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic to shop for that. But i agree that until @commasense finds a shop willing to do that, and has a number in hand (and that number is going to be the low estimate, assuming they don’t find anything else wrong when they start working on it) there’s not much he can do.
And i don’t think the adjuster is trying to cheat him, i think the adjuster is doing his job fairly.
Oh, sorry, I should have been more clear. When I was speaking of “the shop” I was referring back to the carrier’s suggested shop that did the initial estimate. They’d be more at risk than most (and put the carrier at risk of liability) if they did a partial repair under the carrier’s graces than if @commasense took the settlement to a different shop for repairs.
Not in the absolute legal sense, but more in terms of implied responsibility.
Oh, right. They can’t do that. They can say what the repair will cost. They may or may not be willing to negotiate a bandaid, but not under the auspices of the insurance company.
So here’s how it all worked out. Once I realized that it wasn’t likely that we’d get enough from Mapfre to fully repair the Prius, I started looking for a replacement.
Fortunately, late Sunday night I found a 2013 Nissan Leaf at a used car dealer nearby for $5,500, in red, the color my wife prefers. I was able to buy it and get it home on Monday, the day before we traveled to Baltimore to visit family.
The same day, Mapfre finally got back to us with an offer of $4,200 to total the Prius, frankly a little more than I expected. I might have tried to haggle with them for even more, but I just wanted to be done with it. So we accepted.
So now we have the Leaf for about $1,200 out of pocket, plus a few tweaks I’ll have to take care of.
The Leaf is the perfect alternative to the Prius. My wife owned a Leaf when we lived in Las Vegas and she had a 10-minute daily commute, so it will be familiar and comfortable for her. The 70-mile range was no problem in Vegas, and it’s no problem now that she’s retired and only needs it for the occasional nail, hair, or medical appointment. It’s actually better than the Prius, since the latter’s 12V battery died last year because she hadn’t driven it for a month or two. That won’t be an issue with the Leaf.
I had been looking for an older Leaf in the $6,000 range. They show up every once in a while, but mostly you see only newer ones that are $12,000 - $20,000 – way out of our range – and mostly in boring colors. That’s why I jumped on this one, and bought it even though it probably needs a little additional work on the brakes and suspension.
So the Prius will be towed away soon, I’ll get the check once Mapfre has the title in hand, and next week we’ll work on getting the Leaf registered and insured. Case closed.
Thanks, everyone, for the help and advice.
Hooray for happy ending! A kinda rare outcome from an auto accident + insurance battle.
Congrats. Accidents suck. I’m glad this one worked out okay.
I think that was a well thought out solution! Practical, managed the cost, risks and frustrations, and puts you back on the road with a minimum of fuss. I do hope the work to get the Leaf fully up to spec is reasonable, but I have a friend who is still driving a Leaf of that vintage quite happily, so I know they can last.
I’m glad that the settlement worked for you. Again, in my prior experience, it sounds like the traditional, “fair, but not generous” payouts I saw most days. If you had been hit with the captive “trade-in” comps, I would have definitely suggested fighting, but right in the middle of the range is solid.
And I hope putting paid to all of this gives your wife some peace of mind and a helps with her post-accident stress and anxiety. Give her our best.
Thanks for all the congrats and good wishes. It is a relief to have this almost behind us.
Other points that made the Leaf attractive (and worth a little after-sale tweaking) are that it’s a one-owner car, its mileage is very low for its age (45K), and the battery life indicator has ten out of twelve bars remaining, which is very good for a 13-year-old car.
So unless I discover something very serious (in which case the MA 60-day warranty requirement will kick in), I’m confident that this car will work well for us for quite a while.