Warning For Anyone With A-plan Insurance With A Modded Car

[aido]

Just seen this posted over at UltraJap by George:

"be careful with A-Plan, if you crash your heavily modded pride and joy, they'll take it off you, give you book price for it, class it as a right-off and you don't get chance to buy it back, they then auction it off.

Adrian Flux are good they offer like-for-like.

The reason i say this a guy on imoc, insured his motor he had spent £14k on mods, crashed it and A-plan wouldn't let him have first refusal on the car, so he had to register to the auction they use just to buy it back Sad

Just be wary guys."

Just posting here as I know a lot of you are using A-Plan now, just wanted to let you know in case this is an issue for anyone :)

[Adie]

I was going to give them a ring over the next few weeks too. Maybe I wont. I dont fancy losing all the expensive parts I have when I could sell them off individually

[aido]

Exactly what I was thinking mate, it's definitely food for thought for the guys like you who've invested a lot of time and money into their cars!

[Steve]

why not ask Alistair Chapman if this is true?

[aido]

Hoping he'll comment here mate, couldn't remember the guys name.

Hopefully it'll be something they'll be able to address?

[craig7022]

Bugger!! I've just spoken to Alistair, Could have asked him but he craught at a bad time.

Good quote though. and told about the planned mod's and he didn't say anything!

[alastair chapman]

why not ask Alistair Chapman if this is true?

Hi guys, its difficult for me to comment as each case is taken on its own merits, and at risk of teach you all how to suck eggs I'll try to explain how the insurance companies treat these sorts of claims. (We have approximately 40 different schemes available to us at A-Plan Newbury, and our other branches will have other schemes that we do not have and vice versa. I do not recognise the claim in question so I don't believe it relates to my branch)

There are several different categories of "write off", these are:

Category A must be crushed.

Category B salvage is to be broken down for parts only.

Categories D and C are deemed, uneconomical to repair. These are cars which have been involved in a major car accident and are simply uneconomical for an insurance company to repair, or have been deemed a write-off by an insurance company to minimise hire car charges.

Categories D and C can be "bought" back from most insurance companies, for a nominal amount i.e. the scrap value. You are then free to sell the parts of the car, or make the car roadworthy yourself and subject to certain paperwork (e.g. engineers report and MOT) able to put the car back on the road.

The value of the vehicle is always determined by the market value for the vehicle at the time of the write-off(unless you have an agreed value policy, which is usually only associated with classic car policies).

If your car is repairable some insurers will only replace with standard parts, others will replace with the modified parts. (Of those that replace with standard parts, some are willing to replace with modified parts if these can be bought and fitted cheaper than the standard parts.

As a general rule of thumb most insurance companies will replace with standard parts. It is therefore important that if you want like for like replacement you specify this at the time, so a policy of this type can be sourced from a brokers panel of insurers to accomodate this.

Hope this helps

[lee_iceman]

Categories D and C can be "bought" back from most insurance companies

Are A-Plan one of these companies?

[alastair chapman]

Categories D and C can be "bought" back from most insurance companies

Are A-Plan one of these companies?

We are a broker, so it's not our decision. Of the 40 odd schemes we have got I would be comfortable in saying that 98% of them would let you buy it back. There is only one of the insurance companies that I know of that won't always, and we don't use them in Newbury as they are never competitive on Lexus cars for us.

[Steve ( West Mids )]

Surely if you declare modifications you would expect market value including the modifications, if you don't get this then the broker should be telling you this and if you have, for example, a £3k set of wheels and they are damaged / stolen you expect a £3k set of wheels back.

Or am I missing something?

[MrADeveci]

Can I just add that DirectLine do the same thing ............ they have a contract with a salvage yard, who collect the car, then you have to contact them ........... so it's not just A-Plan ! :)