Paper Lawyer

I faxed a photo of my car on its roof to the engineer when he was about to start his inspection, keen to influence the write off

EDIT: It was a big version of this photo:

cheshire_carper

Jo
I am, its a standard concept under the 'Tort of negligence'

I'll break it down simply:

Negligence is a failure to take reasonable care where a duty to do so exists, and where that breach of duty causes reasonbly forseeable, recoverable loss or damage to the person to whom the duty is owed.

Its broke into a number of elements, a)recoverable loss, b) duty of care, c) breach of duty, d) causation, e) forseeablity of loss/damage.


Bottomline, you need to be put back into a position that you were before the situation took place.

There are a multitude of cases that have occured that add and define this concept, the problem will occur making use of this knowledge (as its case law) and how muddy the water is when defining the 'putting back to the position you were, pre accident'.

It could be argued that repair and compensation is the same as new for old.

But you do indeed need to get back to the position you were before. Lets hope your bill is too much to repair and thus gets written off. I am pretty sure its something like a 20% differential. If the difference is less than 20% they (most insurance companies) write off.

One of the senior legals on here will be better placed than I to offer real world help, ie LL or CA.

Paper Lawyer

The young Carper grows strong in the ways of the law. As he says, repair could be sufficient to put you back in the position you were, assuming the repaired part is aesthetically and physically identical to its pre-crash state.

Anything in your insurance policy terms spelling out in black and white the insurer's position on this?

EDIT: I think the differential may be greater - peeps have previouly stated that repairs exceeding 65% of value will result in a write off. They nearly repaired mine by buying a complete bodyshell (the car was only six months old) but there was a four month waiting list to get it direct from Japan.

lower

Jo,

Firstly, contrary to popular views, bodyshops make less out of an insurance repair than a private repair. The insurance companies are the key driver in the industry for getting repair costs down. They have standard estimates of costs for certain degrees of damage for various types of cars, and if the bodyshop's estimate is outside of this it will be scrutinised with a fine tooth comb. Thatcham have a facility where they deliberatly crash and then repair cars to get an accurate assesment of cost and time on repairs.

You will struggle to get them to replace whole panels like the boot floor, and i wouldn't want them to to be honest. As others have said a decent panel beater will make them as good as new and then you won't have issues with the galvanised body being welded and the solid coating of zinc an the shell will not be broken.

if you want the car written off, make a big fuss about ensuring that every aspect of your car is put back to how it was, and also make a big deal of the engine leaking fluid after the crash. Insurers will normally repair up to 2/3rds of the value of the car and no further because there is always the possibility that they will find further damage with the car that they will have to repair. If you tell them you think there might also be engine problems then this may well scare them enough to write off the car even if it would otherwise be marginal.

dreamer

So far the entire estimate is at about 10k (I went to the bodyshop today). That doesn't appear to include roof, panel, bumper or exhaust though!!!

The guy at the bodyshop was great though, and showed me photo's of another S up on the jig etc. Apparantly they do a lot of work for Honda uK - there was even another Moonrock i nthere, and a red.

Spanners

Have a look at:

http://www.tydemans.co.uk/gallery.asp#

Click on they wrecked it we fixed it.

mikey k

Keep pushing the reapir costs up and that will get it written off!
Keep delaying and the hire costs alone will do it

dreamer

That's the plan !! It's 3k labout/paint + VAT, and about 7-8k parts (plus the bits i listed). Hire charges are at about 7k so far, and rising!

The pics of the S they repaired were cool - similar damage and it showed it on the jig etc.

dreamer

PS yep the pics looked the same, but silverstone

MrV

Jo is the roof still down on the car ???

If so is it under cover or not