Accident advice
 

Hello I am looking for some advice from people how have been involved in an accident.

I was rear ended today at a stop light resulting in minor damage. I was wondering if anyone has ever been in an accident and filed/received payout for depreciation/lost value. If so what info did you need to provide and how difficult was the process?

Thanks in advance!

Well... Assuming its minor enough the car is fixable.

Usually, it's a pretty easy process. You call up your insurance, give them info of what occurred and who was involved. Then you take the car to a shop of your liking and they deal with the insurance for payment. If you're not at fault then your insurance company will also work directly with the other party's insurance for whatever payment is due.

If it was your fault or they don't have insurance and you don't have uninsured motorist coverage then you're on the hook for your deductible. If it's their fault and they have insurance then insurance company will bill them for your deductible as well.

Also depending on your policy, a rental car might be included while the car is in the shop.


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thanks for the reply. I know how the repair process goes. I am referring to a compensation for depreciated value. If/when i decide to sell, an accident will now show up on the report which could hurt the value of the car.

Diminished value is what you are after, some insurance companies will fight you on this-some will not. If they do time to lawyer up unfortunately

How much damage ? You may not want to fool with insurance and repair yourself.

I'll quickly tell my story here, you can find the full length on my build thread.

I hit a wall with my car in July 2020, airbags did not go off. There was no frame damage, but I could definitely not drive the car home. At the time, due to covid, insurance companies were not having their adjusters come out to valuate cars and they were leaving it on the body shop to do so. The insurance company recommended one shop and initially towed the car there, but I requested a different shop that was still covered by my insurer. The shop had told me that the way they did evaluations (am I am assuming a normal adjuster would do the same) is by looking at the blue book value of the car then by looking at value of other cars for sale in your area (a car is going to be cheaper in Florida than it will be in California).

Since our cars are too old to have a blue book value, they literally just search for a 1995 Mazda Rx-7 with 70k miles on autotrader. At the time the world's economy and the car market was slowly thawing and there were like only four cars on autotrader (1993-1995). The one that was closest in condition and description to mine was for sale at a dealership in Virginia and the dealer wanted somewhere around $50k for it (cannot remember the exact value but it was way high for the time). I remember the first time I came to the body shop the service writer would not give me the time of day because it was a crummy looking 95 Mazda, then after he did the valuation he thought he was working with a Ferrari.

Finding parts to fix the car was a whole 'nother PITA, but the moral of the story is do not let the insurance company or the body shop bully you around. I did not have to fight the insurance (USAA) but I did have to do a lot of my own parts hunting with the body shop.

I do think it depends on how much damage the car took.

One of the guys here (Kurt) got rear ended pretty hard a while back but fortunately it hit the bumper square on. I think the holder for the license plate light was broken and the paint was cracked, maybe the bumper reinforcement was a little jacked up, but overall not bad.

He just fixed it himself. If the bumper is scuffed/gouged, may just want to take it off the car, find a good body shop, and have them paint it off the car. Probably $300-500 depending on the work it needs. You'd probably spend that on deductible. Then you don't have to jack around with insurance, possibly getting the "accident" on the car fax, etc.

But, again, depends on how bad the damage is.

Dale

Last year my FD was deemed totaled, my experience is about the same as Montego stated so I won't hash out the details. However when it came to valuation what they say they (State Farm) normally do is look at recent sales of the same make and model around my area. Of course, since this car is what it is, there aren't any recent sales that they can view. What they do in that case is call 3 local dealerships and ask them if they had that car, with the equivalent miles at the time of the accident, how much would they charge?
In my case they said all 3 dealers came up with the same number, $42,000. I bought back the car for 10% of that value and received the remainder.
Frankly, I'm fairly pleased with that number. There was some discussion a while back on how much you might set an agreed upon value at for your insurance. I figured if I did that, I'd probably set it at $35K. Good thing I was too lazy to ever make that call!

Actually dealing with the insurance folks and trying to navigate their process sucked in a major way, seemed like not even their people knew the steps I needed to follow to do things the way I wanted. They just kept saying they'll take the car away or to a shop of their choosing, but I wanted to use the shop I wanted. Just remember you have every right to do things your way, it'll just take more effort to navigate their system.

Also of course this is only my experience and in no way is a guarantee of how it might go for anyone else.

I've been on here a long time and don't remember ever seeing a diminished value claim so you might be breaking new ground among the FD community there. I know the Porsche crowd have dealt with that so maybe google for that on a Porsche forum.

Once you're done, switch over to Grundy, Hagerty or similar collector car insurance if you haven't already.

Oops my bad... If you have regular insurance, as far as I know there is no such thing as depreciated value.

I believe insurance is responsible to pay for diminished value by law in some states.

To OP, since the accident already happened, did you file a police report? If you did it will be on Carfax already, so you might as well try to get some insurance payment.

Estimate was $1650 and that is if they reuse my bumper.

I have a Hagerty agreed value policy.

Yes a police report was filed. I just don't trust people enough to make a gentlemans agreement on the side of the road. Lol.

Now I am curiouscuriJDM cars are tracked the same through the DMV and Carfax.

Then it is likely on your Carfax report already, or will be, I don't know how it works with JDM import tho.

At this point, just try to get as much payout as possible from the other guy's insurance.

I'm thinking the only way to get a numerical value would be to get an appraiser to value your car and determine how much an accident report affects your car's value at this point in time. Then you can use that to leverage that additional amount from the other party's insurance company. Note that this would not take account "future value" because that would be impossible to determine.

You may want to look at getting insurance from one of the companies that insures antique/ classic cars. They usually have agreed value to determine the rate. You and the insurance company agree on what the car is worth and then there is no arguing when there is an accident. I have Hagerty for my 1968 Corvette convertible. I hardly ever drive the RX-7 but I will probably switch to Hagerty in the spring. Rates are competitive.

I do have Hagerty. I am not using my insurance though. It's all going through his insurance.

I would at least get a settlement for a new OEM bumper, painted and blended into surrounding panels. You never know what kind of damage is under the paint or if the bumper is now deformed. If you own the car outright you can decide on extent of repairs once you receive the check.

I just went through this 3 months ago. Simply ask the person that is handling your claim about the diminished value. The diminished value was handled after repairs. Since there are no blue book values he found an average price of 3 cars near by. I believe it was in the 50k range at that time. Then they pay out a percentage of the value. My repairs were $2500 and the diminished value payout was $2250.