Scum - stolen car

[aidanjaye]

Hi Rusty Crobar - if what you said is true, then it is yet again the insurance companies swindling joe public. The only people to profit are the traders and insurers....and the scum who steal cars. Surely the reason for insurance is to replace the vehicle for a similar vehicle - not a below condition, auction or cat c heap of sh*t.  We pay full premiums - we don't ask to insure 75% off a vehicle...

A sad day - just hope no other forum members have same problem. If what you said is true for ISFs, then I would be bailing soon when retail figures are firm, rather than if the worst happens, you loose 4-5 grand.

Maybe the insurance companies should just advertise that they will give you trade value for your vehicle if something happens! Then you end up with the vicious circle and attitude of a few who just end up saying "why bother". I cant ever remember being asked by a insurance broker did I want to insurer to an agreed value, something I feel they should be pushing if they intend to short change the customer.

 

Some on here have mentioned agreed values - but not many insurers offer this unless its a classic or unusual car. Wonder why? Gap insurance - fine if you get it when you purchase a vehicle but trying getting it for an older vehicle or one you have had more than 3 months.....but that's a whole other subject I suppose.

 

Anyway - lets see what happens, and I will be sure to let you all know. Needless to say I have changed insurers.

 

 

 

[lotusdave]

the policy wording doesn't say"the average value of all is versions". Nor does it say the trade value. It should pay out a fair value. Fight your corner. They knew what they were insuring, took your money and now need to pay out theirs.

 

d

[lotusdave]

just read my admiral policy. Definition is "cost of replacing YOUR (their bold) car with one of a similar condition, age, mileage".

fos will rule in your favour in my opinion, assuming your wording is similar.

[Flytvr]

Gap insurance is pretty cheap. Got to be worth having.

[lotusdave]

what does gap pay? The difference between what you paid (rather than current value) and the insurers pay out? Okay I can see the value BUT in this case gap shouldn't be needed; the insurer is robbing the OP blind by not offering market value of a rare version of a mundane saloon.

we have gap on our new jeep but mainly coz depreciation is awful ans second hand value laughably low compared to what we paid.

[aidanjaye]

Gap insurance is meant for newer vehicles to top up for high depreciation, and make sure outstanding finance is covered should something happen.

Cars older than 7 years don't normally qualify - or if a car has been purchased privately / or more than 3 months prior trying to get Gap. All policies are different - but this is the rough generalisation.

 

Lotusdave - "cost of replacing YOUR (their bold) car with one of a similar condition, age, mileage". I will certainly forward that one to my insurer. Will go and dig out my policy as its the same insurer.

[emjay82]

It really shouldn't be necessary to take out gap insurance but unfortunately most insurance companies will do their best to avoid paying out. I do feel for your situation, I've been in a similar situation with previous cars. If anything they should give generous payouts due to their rarity ;-). For the sake of £120 I took out the gap for peace of mind......... begrudgingly.

[aidanjaye]

Which company(s) are people using for GAP?

I didn't actually get the XKR till a few months back - so still within the 3 month for GAP criteria.

[aidanjaye]

11 hours ago, lotusdave said:

just read my admiral policy. Definition is "cost of replacing YOUR (their bold) car with one of a similar condition, age, mileage".

fos will rule in your favour in my opinion, assuming your wording is similar.

First run in with FOS was not great - they agreed with insurer. So I asked to take it further....in no rush and happy to take it as far as needs, just don't like the idea of being "shafted" twice - once with the thieving buggers, and once with insurer.

[Linas.P]

18 hours ago, aidanjaye said:

once with the thieving buggers, and once with insurer.

I hardly see difference betwen those 2... I feel that main purpose of insurance in UK is to deter people from owning the car. Good luck with you case

[lotusdave]

Probably teaching your grandmother to suck eggs (which is the oddest phrase ever!), but have you made it crystal clear to FoS that this is a very rare car and that your insurer are treating like a normal one?

Who are you with, we can look up the wording online no doubt and check what it says,

You shouldnt have to buy extra insurance (gap) to cover what is supposed to be insured.   Okay, they always haggle over a few quid but not a few thousand or 10%s of the car's value.

 

NAME AND SHAME if it fails as I dont want to be insured with the same people.

 

Earlier someone mentioned an exige; my elise is covered by a specialist insurer on an lotus scheme with track time included, so you know they know it's a hard car to value and that after 8 years its lost 30% not 75%.

People do need to be careful with cheap insurance, or anything in life that's cheap.  It's cheap for a reason.  A friend found they had a £1,000 excess on water escape in the home whch is one of the most common causes of a claim, meaning it more or less wasnt insured.  If they'd known, they would happily have paid more for a "proper" policy.  Not saying OP has cheap insurance, but just be careful.

 

 

 

[is200 Newbie]

I feel for you

Been through this with the insurance a few years back when two of our cars were flooded - a 2007 Clio and a 2004 IS200. The Clio was wifes car, was spotless and only used for the supermarket run around. We had owned it from new and it had only done around 20k miles. Was written off in a flood in 2012. The Lexus was also spotless (for its age), high miles but as we know they are build like a rock and we look after them. We lost the two cars and the house to the flood. Funnily enough, I was more gutted at losing my IS than the house!!

We had a rough time with the insurance co all round - the Clio was settled for £3200 and the Lexus was £1800 - both insured with LV. Initial cheques were sent out as I believe the insurers all do, as an offer. I don't know what the real reason for this is? I fought for the values of the cars and got it up a bit, I think it was 2 or 300 £'s for the Clio but they would not budge on the Lex and I was quoted others on web sites that could be bought for the value they gave me but these were not my model which was an LE model, at the time quite hard to find.

In our situation we didn't want the extra hassle of fighting this due to everything else going on so gave in and used the two sums to buy another car for my wife which was comparable with what she lost. certainly the insurer gained a profit from us...twice. and then you also lose out when making a claim and to add insult to that you are also penalized when claiming against another driver through no fault of your own. - makes you wonder why bother

The insurance industry certainly needs lookin at !!

[FTBBCVoodoo]

44 minutes ago, is200 Newbie said:

I feel for you

Been through this with the insurance a few years back when two of our cars were flooded - a 2007 Clio and a 2004 IS200. The Clio was wifes car, was spotless and only used for the supermarket run around. We had owned it from new and it had only done around 20k miles. Was written off in a flood in 2012. The Lexus was also spotless (for its age), high miles but as we know they are build like a rock and we look after them. We lost the two cars and the house to the flood. Funnily enough, I was more gutted at losing my IS than the house!!

We had a rough time with the insurance co all round - the Clio was settled for £3200 and the Lexus was £1800 - both insured with LV. Initial cheques were sent out as I believe the insurers all do, as an offer. I don't know what the real reason for this is? I fought for the values of the cars and got it up a bit, I think it was 2 or 300 £'s for the Clio but they would not budge on the Lex and I was quoted others on web sites that could be bought for the value they gave me but these were not my model which was an LE model, at the time quite hard to find.

In our situation we didn't want the extra hassle of fighting this due to everything else going on so gave in and used the two sums to buy another car for my wife which was comparable with what she lost. certainly the insurer gained a profit from us...twice. and then you also lose out when making a claim and to add insult to that you are also penalized when claiming against another driver through no fault of your own. - makes you wonder why bother

The insurance industry certainly needs lookin at !!

 

 

I'm afraid that unless you paid more than £3200 to insure the Clio and more than £1800 to insure the Lexus then the insurance company made a loss.

Believe it or not, on average an insurance company only makes about 1% profit on every car policy sold.  

 

[Ceramicolive]

Insurance is a scam hiding in plain site that is what it has boiled down to now. it's a disgrace.

It's as simple as getting as much money in whilst avoiding paying out, maximising profits for share holders. simple.

I feel for you, I had a similar situation many years ago with an Astra GTE.

[aidanjaye]

4 hours ago, lotusdave said:

Probably teaching your grandmother to suck eggs (which is the oddest phrase ever!), but have you made it crystal clear to FoS that this is a very rare car and that your insurer are treating like a normal one?

Who are you with, we can look up the wording online no doubt and check what it says,

You shouldnt have to buy extra insurance (gap) to cover what is supposed to be insured.   Okay, they always haggle over a few quid but not a few thousand or 10%s of the car's value.

 

NAME AND SHAME if it fails as I dont want to be insured with the same people.

 

Earlier someone mentioned an exige; my elise is covered by a specialist insurer on an lotus scheme with track time included, so you know they know it's a hard car to value and that after 8 years its lost 30% not 75%.

People do need to be careful with cheap insurance, or anything in life that's cheap.  It's cheap for a reason.  A friend found they had a £1,000 excess on water escape in the home whch is one of the most common causes of a claim, meaning it more or less wasnt insured.  If they'd known, they would happily have paid more for a "proper" policy.  Not saying OP has cheap insurance, but just be careful.

 

 

 

It wasn't a "cut price" insurer - Its one of the majors. Not naming and shaming yet but their name has already been mentioned in posting...wink wink. I have listed every ISF for sale since my car was nicked, highlighting the pros / cons of each one compared to my vehicle. Also expressed the very limited numbers of these cars around.

Insurers are a business and need to make money, which is fair enough. But they should also take the rough with the smooth. The only make 1% profit. Ask your self what 1% is on the uk insurance market ?? a lot of money. All I will say is the insurer in question had a 6% rise in profits (that's not 6% profit - that's a 6% rise in profits) to nearly 360 million quid in 2015.

Google - thisismoney.co.uk, annual insurer profits and rewards for 2015. I wont copy the full link in but its easy to find. Makes interesting reading.

Someone in the "know" might enlighten me - but I believe that some insurance assessors are on commission (or they used to be). If a claim is 20k, and they pay out 16k - then they get a % (albeit small) of the savings made.

I'm lucky to be in a position to have already replaced the vehicle, but that also means I will drag this out for as long as required. Apart from the cash - its the principle.

[FTBBCVoodoo]

1% profit is on average.  I am aware of a case last year where a driver seriously injured a cyclist and the drivers insurance company are paying millions in continued care for the rest of the cyclists life.  A £400 policy obviously didn't make a 1% profit in this case.

In terms of commission, depends on insurance company.  Bigger insurance companies generally employ their own assessors and no commission applies.  Smaller companies can outsource if they haven't got the manpower.

But...  as you are quite rightly doing, you should fight until you get a desired outcome.  Good Luck :-)

 

[is200 Newbie]

2 hours ago, FTBBCVoodoo said:

 

 

I'm afraid that unless you paid more than £3200 to insure the Clio and more than £1800 to insure the Lexus then the insurance company made a loss.

Believe it or not, on average an insurance company only makes about 1% profit on every car policy sold.  

 

..... but is that not a bit of miss-representation as I bought the insurance, their product that they sold to me on their assumption of the cost for cover and with the assumption it would cover any losses should they occur?

Don't get me wrong..I get how insurance is needed but not how it is administered.

A couple of things come to mind - when you insure your car you put a value of the car in so the policy can be worked out? What's the point in this - if say I put a value of 6k against my car and it was written off tomorrow then surely that's the amount that it should be insured to, (give or take)...? I know this would be hard to administer due to owners valuing their cars over the top  but an easy option for the insurers to apply when taking a policy out as there must be a valuation band - lower and upper valuation of the car (bad condition sliding up to excellent condition) 

If the value of the car goes down every year, which it does, why does the insurance go up? Also, another question is to why do the companies really price you out of their business making you go look for another policy from another company

Not connected to car insurance - when we were flooded I had trouble not with the insurance company but the independent loss adjuster who was not a part of the insurance company but contracted to them and I got the impression it was the loss adjuster pulling the strings to keep costs down or inflate the profit for them?

[lotusdave]

in which case I remain hopeful outcome will be reasonable. If it were me id be doing a table of all the Fs for sale in the country and mileage and age and price to make it very clear to ombudsmen what your talking about.

 

remember they see dozens of cases ans 99% will be Mondeo man moaning without due justification.  make sure yours stands out. Make it easy for them to agree with you.

exactly what is the definition of value in your policy wording?

[lotusdave]

oh, value on inception when you get quote is pointless, the definition of value isn't "what you said" its what's worth.

value box might trigger tracker etc. Interestingly I had trouble this renewal a few weeks back as the least expensive wanted tracker, which I've never had requested before. So i stuck with admiral.

 

d 

 

[lotusdave]

lastly some price at high rate as they don't want the business.  few years ago Aviva ran a scheme for lotus. Then their computer noticed increasing number of claims for lotus elise WITH business use. All of a sudden if you had both od those, they price was stupid. Exige and bizniz was fine. Elise and no bizniz fine too, but both = we don't want your money sir.

the maths and stuff behind the scenes these days is impressive.

 

but they should bloody pay the true value of OPs car.

[aidanjaye]

Lotusdave - did exactly as you suggested. Sent them a list of all ISFs for sale.....not hard to do when the list is only 13 long, and easily reduced to show cars of similar year and mileage:

Heres jist of what I sent:

"""have reviewed vehicles for sale in the whole UK, which did not take long as there is only 13 cars at present, out of which 7 are 08 or 58 plated cars.

Below is details of these 7:

08 plate, 91000 miles, £15500 (this car is known on Lexus forums as a poor example, hence current price).

08 plate, 97600 miles, £16900 (modified vehicle hence valuation less).

08 plate, 97600 miles, £17500 (private seller - not main dealer).

08 plate, 68000 miles, £18990 (grey in colour).

58 plate, 70000 miles, £19000 (private seller).

08 plate, 63000 miles, £19995 (dealer car, white in colour). 

58 plate, 58000 miles, £20995 (dealer car, red in colour)).

Have also checked Pistonheads and there is only 6 cars for sale, but all are included in above list.

As can easily be gauged, "insurer" offer will go no where near purchasing a replacement car of similar spec, mileage and history. Our car was a 58 plate, Full Lexus Service history dealer supplied car, in white, with a mileage of 66000 showing. It had just been serviced and had a full health check carried out by Lexus Glasgow several days before theft, during time no faults what so ever were found with car. Lexus stated car was in A1 condition.

"insurers" initial reviews stated that we could "haggle" with used prices. There may be a little negotiation when purchasing second hand, but not near the £3500 that would be needed.

If, as you mentioned, I remove the private adverts, plus the modified car and the poor example - the average retail is £19960 / average miles 63000.""""

 

[aidanjaye]

On ‎21‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 6:39 AM, lotusdave said:

just read my admiral policy. Definition is "cost of replacing YOUR (their bold) car with one of a similar condition, age, mileage".

fos will rule in your favour in my opinion, assuming your wording is similar.

My definition of value in my policy wording is exact same as yours by Admiral Lotusdave......

[FTBBCVoodoo]

45 minutes ago, is200 Newbie said:

..... but is that not a bit of miss-representation as I bought the insurance, their product that they sold to me on their assumption of the cost for cover and with the assumption it would cover any losses should they occur?

Don't get me wrong..I get how insurance is needed but not how it is administered.

A couple of things come to mind - when you insure your car you put a value of the car in so the policy can be worked out? What's the point in this - if say I put a value of 6k against my car and it was written off tomorrow then surely that's the amount that it should be insured to, (give or take)...? I know this would be hard to administer due to owners valuing their cars over the top  but an easy option for the insurers to apply when taking a policy out as there must be a valuation band - lower and upper valuation of the car (bad condition sliding up to excellent condition) 

If the value of the car goes down every year, which it does, why does the insurance go up? Also, another question is to why do the companies really price you out of their business making you go look for another policy from another company

Not connected to car insurance - when we were flooded I had trouble not with the insurance company but the independent loss adjuster who was not a part of the insurance company but contracted to them and I got the impression it was the loss adjuster pulling the strings to keep costs down or inflate the profit for them?

Some good points there.

When it comes to car valuation, the hardest thing to prove if it's stolen or damaged is proof of condition.  This is where the market value comes into it.  Say someone had a car damaged by fire.  The car may have been spotless but neither the person making the claim or the insurance assessor can prove/see the spotless condition and the market average of age/mileage/spec applies.  

To your point about a valuation band.  This does happen.  Generally (and this is very general) a cars value is in brackets of say for example 20k steps for the insurance underwriters.  Say your car is worth 21k when you buy it, it could then also be classed in the same bracket as a 39k car and the policy is priced accordingly.  When testing quotes, the price will be based on the individual's risk profile (age, profession, location, history) alongside the cars risk profile (power, safety features, cost of repair).  I doubt you will notice much difference running a quote on a 2008 ISF compared to a 2014 ISF for example (sure I can be proven wrong here).

In terms of insurance going up each year.  This is the insurance market as a whole.  Our lovely friends over in the EU passed the gender neutral law which meant that Male drivers couldn't be charged more than a female driver (after all, we are better drivers yeah ;-) ).  This drove prices down for a while.  But....  several things have happened which have meant that insurance companies have all agreed (and they do converse about this) to incrementally increase their prices year on year.  Some reasons for this and in no particular order and in no means a complete list

1) Cars now more expensive to fix.  This will only increase while the Pound is struggling against the Euro as most spare parts to fix damaged cars are purchased and imported from Europe.

2) Insurance Fraud.  Occurs all too frequently in all insurance industries.

3) Insurance company return on investment.  The 1% profit on car/home policies would historically be put into government bonds with an interest rate of 3%.  With interest rates being so low, there is no no return on investment from said bonds.  This has caused insurance companies to invest elsewhere.  Brexit happening has meant that a lot of these investments have had little or no return whatsoever.

4) Weather.  Such as flooding (as you are well aware of).

With your note regarding they would rather your business goes elsewhere.  It's generally down to risk appetite.  A company for instance may target over 40's who drive 1.4L Civics.  They may have a good few years making money and want to make more so they increase their risk appetites and start to target over 30's who drive M3's and so on. Once they find the correct balance that works for them, they will then sometimes price existing customers out of their company as the customers risk profile no longer matches the risk appetite of the company.

On a side note....  Those lovely meerkats that everyone wants.  Insurance companies pay them £50 per every policy that is taken out with said insurance companies regardless to whether the policy cost £50 or £1000.  Approx.  60% of an insurance companies policies are sold through agg sites such as go compare, confused, meerkat and such like and obviously have nothing to pay out should the policy be sold at a loss.  So top tip, start a comparison site to make money.

Oh, and all the comparison sites are actually owned by insurance companies....  #justsaying

 

[lotusdave]

op, can you get the dealer principle to write to fos valuing the car? Do they know you have the jag yet?

how about we all out our cars up for sale for long enough to grab some more "used prices":?!  my 08 70k okay condition, 25,0000 pounds for you Sir!

[aidanjaye]

lotusdave - Dealer it had its last service at had been taking care of car for a while (knew previous owner and car well), and I already forwarded 3 pages condition report from dealer to insurance company. This bumped their offer from 14200 (yes...14200!!!!) to 16.4k.  Not trying to be greedy with settlement figure - reckon my car was worth 19500 in a dealer and around 18900 private. FLSH - A1 condition.