insurance claim query

[bloodylegend]

Hi there
the other day another car hit mine at some traffic lights. he passed a red light and wrote off my car. he said he had insurance with the RAC so i wont have to pay anything. my question is how much would the insurance company pay out. its a VR manual v6 ute that was in excellent condition. to me i believe i could have sold the ute for at least 7000 but redbook has these car valued at much less. the car did have nices rims and a good sound system, plus a hard cover tono on the back. could i claim these aswell?

[Calaber]

Do you have comprehensive insurance on your car? If not, the other bloke's insurer will only pay out the market value, as calculated by their assessor. You can bet that it will be a lot less than you would like, probably close to the Redbook value and the extras you mention won't make much difference. They might add a few hundred for the wheels and sound, but it's not too likely.

If you had comprehensive insurance, you would claim on that with your insurer for the insured value of your car and your insurer would then claim payment from the other driver. In such a case, your no-claim bonus and excess would not be affected.

You do have options when a car is written off. You can take the money and run, leaving them with the car, or you can agree on a reduced payout and keep the car. Remember that when an insurer writes a car off, its salvage value to them is taken into account, so they might offer say $5k for the full car, or $3k and you keep it. (These figures are just for argument's sake, I wouldn't have a clue what the Redbook says). The choice is up to you.

[DevilDRake]

If you had full comp @ an agreed price (market is $11k for my car, i've got it insured for $14k) then you'd get paid out the full 14k.

If you DIDN'T, then you'd only get market value, REGARDLESS of whats on it.

So honestly, take anything like speakers or stuff as you won't get the money for it.

[JShaw]

So honestly, take anything like speakers or stuff as you won't get the money for it.

This. My brother has (or HAD) a beautiful VK with a killer sound system and the same situation happened to him, so he ripped that stereo outta there! haha

[JSTCOZ]

yeah mate rims and sound system wont change value of the car. for a VR you'll get probably $3,000 - $3,500 for it i think. My VS got written off with 97,000km on it and it got $4000. So dependiong on your k's it could even be lower than $3000