Car Insurance Payouts
If you’re unlucky enough to have your car stolen, or it’s involved in a crash, your insurer will have to work out what it’s worth and pay out accordingly. How much it’s worth will also dictate whether or not it’s written off, depending on the cost of fixing it; you can find out more about how and why cars are written off in our guide. Having to make an insurance claim tends to be traumatic enough, without it turning into a battle between you and your insurer. Unfortunately that’s exactly what often happens; you’ve got a sum in mind when you put in that claim and your insurer has a different figure. If you’re lucky the two aren’t so far apart that there’s no hope of meeting somewhere in the middle – but don’t count on it. The bottom line is that your insurer will pay out what it thinks your car is worth – or in other words, the cost of buying an identical replacement. And therein lies the problem, because finding a car just like the one owned by you that’s just been crashed or stolen might be all but impossible. When insurance companies are dealing with payouts they’re not attached to your car like you might be. They don’t care about the hundreds of hours you’ve lavished on cleaning it and keeping it as good as new. The fact that you’ve owned it from day one so you know it’s never been crunched. Or the fact that you’ve just spent £1000 on a full service and a new set of tyres. If it’s old it’ll be relatively worthless, so don’t expect to get back all of the money you’ve put into it.