About a week and a half ago I was sitting upstairs, relaxing and drinking coffee at my folks' house. My brother comes up and says "There's a guy outside who says he just hit your car. He's in a bus."

………

So I go down stairs and sure enough there's a school bus stopped in front of the house. Turns out he was making a turn and cut the wheel too hard, sending the back side of the bus into the rear-driver's side corner of my car.



Please note how my car fought back valiantly.



So now my beautiful, 104,000 mile, nothing-else-wrong-with-it Volvo is sitting in some sad body shop lot with the school district's insurance company claiming it's totaled. Going to talk with them face to face tomorrow. No way I can get a car anywhere as nice as mine for the sickly sum they're offering me.

 

Does this look like $6,200 worth of damage to you? There was no frame damage at all, just quarter panel, trunk lid, light cluster, bumper, and spoiler.

 

Take the money, buy the car back, and get it fixed somewhere for cash. When you take it somewhere don't tell them you got the cash from an insurance company. Just tell them that you need to get your car fixed and YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO DO IT OR NOT. A good shop may do it for $2,500 for you.

 

The problem with that is most states will "brand" the title as totaled and then his resale value is gone, and it might be harder to get insurance on it. Sometimes you can get lucky and the title won't get branded though.

 

Most insurance companies will total the car after the damage exceeds 75% of the value of the car. You can take the money up to the 75% number and then get it fixed. You shouldn't have a "salvage" title then because it will not have been totaled.

When our S60 got hail damage we took the 75% and then sold the car with hail damage and a clear title for more than they would have given us as a total.

 

I took a car at "near total value", minus the deductable and got the car back. Got it fixed for 20% of what they gave me and 2 years later realized that it still had a clean car fax.

I don't think he's so worried about resale value over having his nice car in his posession.

 

Update for you. After a lot of arguing with the worthless insurance company I'm going to pick up my $5600 check on Tuesday and they'l get the car. I'm really going to miss it, but I'm looking at an '05 S60 T5 to quell my anger about the situation.

 

any way you slice it that is fraud.

 

Please enlighten me as I'm rather dense. Which transaction is fraud?
1) Taking the settlement? (I take insurance payments all the time! Home, auto, and health - never considered it fraud)
2)Buy the car back? Since when is buying a car fraud? They own it, you pay for it. Does it matter that they bought it from you first? I don't see how....
3)Get it fixed for cash. hmmmmm, I'm guilty of paying cash for body work also, am I looking at hard time?
4) Not telling the body shop where you got the cash? Heck, I've never been asked where I got the money for anything, most people are only too happy to get it from me. Again, this is a 2 person transaction - What will you charge me to fix my car. One could look for several estimates and not be accused of dishonesty. Why here?

Seems like these are a series of individual transactions, each of which is legal.

 

eh as long as you keep it cash and someone doesn't audit you I guess you should be fine.

I wasn't thinking right. But I do know of someone who did that sorta thing and the insurance company went after him for fraud. That was a 100 grand car though...and I think it was bank owned. It was a mess from what I heard.

 

Man, this is the GREAT USA. None of what I suggested is FRAUD. I never aimed to scam anyone, just doing good business for me, my car, and my money.

 

im sorry robert, I just see and hear of it happening all the time up this way. I got scammed out of $800 a year or so ago. Lucky it was not at a loss, but still I got scammed out of it.

 

What happened to me a few years back was that my daughter wrecked my 960. The insurance company gave me $4,500 and the car. I took the car to a body shop that fixed it for $1,800, not perfect but pretty good. The car only had about 90,000 on it so I kept it and ended up selling it a year later, to purchase the wagon I now have.

Some insuracne companies would rather wash their hands of a car that is near total to avoid the repairs going above the estimate and also avoids wrestling with customers when they are not fully satisfied with repairs a shop does. Many don't care if you fix the car or not. They are paying for your loss not trying to restore you.

 

How much did the insurance company want to sell the car back to you?