smithwh

Hello all! On January 2012 I rear-ended my friend at a stoplight. We were on the way to the gunshow and I was distracted. It was out of character for me because I am a very safe driver.

The insurance adjuster/appraiser wants to offer me 6300 for the totaled vehicle. I dont know about that. It has 140,000 miles, red 2003 GT Mustang black leather premium 6 disc cd changer with the mach 460. power everything besides passenger side seat.

I wish I could post the appraisal report to this site but it doesn't look like I can. Thank you all.


Harrison

essayons

I'm assuming this is settled by now, but here's some info for future use:

First question is what insurance company and in what area? I used to work for one in Northern Virginia, so I'm just curious.

But really, the first thing to do if you want to dispute the vehicle's value is to get your own value. Pulling a number out of the air will do you zero good. The first place I used to look when negotiating a vehicle's value was NADAguides.com. Gives you a good nationwide snapshot of value.
The next place to go is either autotrader.com or cars.com. Search for your year/make/model, plus or minus a year if you need more comparable vehicles, and search for similar miles. Search local (stay within as small a radius as possible to your home zip code) and compare. Stick with dealer ads as much as possible, simply for the fact that most private sellers really have no clue what their cars are worth, unless they've done all this same research (no offense to anyone who knows what their car is worth)

NADA returns $8,400 for the vehicle at clean retail. You can do your own local search.

Finally, take a good honest look at your car. I know they're all immaculate to us, as owners, but look at it objectively.
How clean is your oil? How clean is your engine bay?
What's the interior like? Do the seats show a lot of wear and tear? Is the leather cracking? Is the cloth stained/faded? Is the trim all intact and in place? Are there burn marks inside? Is the carpet worn out with holes and bare spots?
What does the paint look like? Faded? Lots of chips/nicks/scratches? Rust? Prior damage? Bad prior paint? Swirl marks?
How is the body? Dings? Dents? Misaligned/missing panels? Prior damage?
What's the remaining tread on the tires? Less than 5/32 of an inch?
Condition of the glass? Lots of little pits? Any cracks/chips/stars?

All of these questions are questions that the adjuster will be asking him/herself while evaluating your car, and excessive amounts of wear and tear or damage will certainly devalue the vehicle.

Finally, remember that for most companies, the adjuster isn't creating the value, he's sending a report of the vehicle to an independent company who will give him a value for the car based on local comparables.

smithwh

Hey thank u for the reply of couse with my luck we settled the same day u posted a reply. Hopefully this information will help someone in the future maximize on their insurance coverage. She gave me 6922. I couldnt find very good comparables but the ones i did find were for 8000 outside of the market area. I still feel like she took advantage of me but i just wanted the process to be over and done with. That number did include the deductable though.

RVAStang05

Also late to this party but wanted to mention this: jerk in a Camry t-boned me in my last Stang... It was an 05 (I had had it for 3 months!) but I had all sorts of upgrades- rims, wheels, custom dual exhaust, tune, CAI, stereo, etc etc- they told me I could pull off whatever I wanted to, but if I left things on (I chose to do this, because the wheels had damage and I figured I'd rather start over with mods) I could provide the adjuster with a list of those mods and they would be taken into account. They did, and I feel I was given a very fair price. I use Progressve....

Nova_Mustang

I've had the same thing happen with insurance companies with total losses. Ah the struggle.

In another somewhat related area, if there's just damage to the vehicle, be sure to pursue "Diminished Value". The gist of it is, Imagine 2 identical cars with identical damage. When it comes to resell them, they will be given 2 different prices, let's say $5000 and $7000. The "Diminished Value" is the $2000 difference what you're seeking to make you whole.There are a bunch of sites that will do "evaluations", but at the very least it's worth pursuing. Most times the burden of proof is on you to come up with a figure.