How in the heck is this car totaled??? I am getting scammed

[Bamaaviator]

So there I was...

Car pulled in front of me and slammed on the brakes, I couldn't stop in time....hit him in the back.

My car hit his trailer hitch and did not even leave a visible mark on his SUV, but it did damage my front end.

Insurance had it towed to a service yard and they estimated a 5 day repair window and about $5k in repairs. Ok, It would need a hood, front end, and 2 side panels, ...not rocket science as I have seen a ton of worse wrecks. Speed was so slow the airbags didn't even deploy.

Fast forward a month and a half and I STILL don't have my car back and now the estimate just jumped up to $14000 dollars! Mechanic guy said they would have to strip my car down to the frame...to include removing all interior carpet, console, dash, seats, sills, etc...to rewire my whole (@&#) car!

With them running up the total so high, insurance is going to total it tomorrow and I am going to lose all the equity I had with my trade in with my other car and have no car at all. I am so livid right now. Car only had 2000 miles on it and my first wreck ever.

There is no way this is $14000 in damage. They are charging to replace every item on the front end even though there is no issue with the right side headlight, nor my fog lights, or half the other stuff they have added to the estimate. Even included my mirrors?? There is nothing wrong with my darn mirrors. Oh ya...the busted my windshield when removing the hood, so that just tacked another 900 in parts / paint / and labor too... I am so pissed off right now.

 

[inv4zn]

Did you not get GAP insurance?

Also, while the possibility of them milking you(r insurance) is definitely there, body damage and mechanical damage are very different things.

You can see the radiator is fucked, and in very close proximity to that is the ECU, which is likely also fucked. Your light lens may be fine, but there are other parts to it that bolt to the frame, which are likely fucked.

I don't get it - I understand you stand to lose on depreciation if you don't have GAP insurance, but would you rather drive around a car that's been fucked, and already lost tons of resale value? Or take the exact same hit and get a new vehicle?

Also, if you didn't get GAP, why the fuck didn't you get GAP on a brand new car?

 

[Bamaaviator]

Its my first wreck and first time ever dealing with insurance, so there is a lot of things that I do not know. All I know is that I had been paying for insurance for the past 22 years and expected that when something went wrong, it would be fixed, which is why I had been paying a premium for a low deductible.

Neither the insurance company or the service lot is keeping me informed of what is going on. I just so happen to show up to pick up my car when it is scheduled to be completed to then be told "oh, it will be another week" now for the past 3 1/2 weeks. I was supposed to pick up my car today only to call and find out that yet another $5000 dollars had been added and now it will most likely be totaled out. The mere idea that that relativley minor damage on the front end requires them to gut the interior of my car and remove the console and dash and rewire my entire car sounds extremely far fetched. That in itself added 1800 in labor, not to mention they broke my windshield at the car lot adding another 800 to the bill, just adding more to the total.

From my understanding now....and I could be wrong and feel free to correct me if that is the case....but if my car is totaled out they will only pay what they would claim the value is now. So I bought the car for 26000 added 1500 for black leather ( which in hindsight I was foolish and didnt realize they would charge me for it ) and add all the other bs they tossed in during the finance portion and the cost of the car came out to be close to 30k. Now insurance may say its only worth 20k....leaving me to still owe 10k on the car, plus I will have lost the 6000 in equity I had on my trade in from my Mustang. Is this correct? I cant get a straight answer from anyone at the moment and just sitting here in the dark for over the past month. In all the extra stuff they tossed in the finance package, I may have GAP and not know it...so that I will check. Even with GAP, wouldnt I still end up with no car and have essentially lost my Mustang trade-in in the process? Basically ending up with no car and no way to replace it? I thought this was why I paid a heavy premium for the past 22 years, was for insurance to repair or replace my car in case of an accident.

So the way I see it at the moment is worst case scenario.....they total it and claim its only worth 20k or so and I am on the hook for the additional 10k and end up with no car, losing the equity from my Mustang, and being on the hook for 10k

Or best case, I find out I have whatever GAP is....and I just end up with no car again, and losing out on the 6k equity I had in the Mustang...but they cover the rest of what I owe on the car?

Like I said, this is the first time in my life Ive had an accident and needed insurance and am completely clueless on the process and am getting absolutely no support from either the insurance company or the car service lot.

Thank you for any insight.

 

[Snoopyslr]

Sorry about your accident man, it's no fun dealing with insurance companies.

It's very hard to tell from these pictures, but if the body is pushed back it's easily $14,000 in damages. It looks like the passenger side fender is pushed into the a pillar. If there is no actual body damage, then it's definitely not that expensive. Replacing a core support is pretty common and cheap. Core supports are built to be sacrificial because that's the first thing to get hit in an accident. You can request quotes from other body shops, and I would definitely do that.

If you don't know if you have gap insurance, you probably don't unfortunately. I would explain to your insurance agent and body shop the situation you will be in if the vehicle is totaled. They should work with you.

Remember, your insurance company works for you, not the other way around. If you're getting no where with your current representative, then ask for another or for their supervisor.

 

[chicubfn]

How is the car only worth $20,000? You have a touring model. What are they using to evaluate? CCC? NADA?

Please post your entire estimate so I can see it.

You have a new vehicle so it's all OEM parts which are expensive.

Headlights have tabs on the back that are very easy to break in an accident.

How long have you owned the vehicle? If it's just a month or two it's possible to go off your bill of sale less mileage depreciation.

 

[Boz]

There is no way you will "lose" the equity you had in your trade-in. That should have been applied to your purchase price.

To simplify, if your total cost was $30,000, your loan amount would have been $30,000-$6,000=$24,000. Any "loss" will be due to depreciation of the new car.

Was your loan amount around $24,000?

 

[Bamaaviator]

I have only had the car about 2 months, mileage was around 2300 I believe. Had the full touring model with a few extra upgrades. Here is the whole estimate. What seems suspicious is that every 10 days they seem to find another $5k in damage. I can understand an initial estimate being off, but not being 3x more expensive and they have had the car now a total of 30 days and JUST NOW finding and adding an additional $5000 more as of yesterday.

 

[chicubfn]

The mechanical times for that are manually lined would be the only questionable items I see. That is only $1200 of the estimate though. The field adjuster should be able to negotiate those down.

I would rather the vehicle be totaled though, you don't want to be going back and forth with various electrical errors etc.

You vehicle should be valued at around $25,000, I do not understand the $20,000 amount you are noting.

 

[inv4zn]

Please heed the advice here instead of acting off of your emotions.
We're cutting you slack since you did say it's your first accident, but there's really no reason to be angry for rear-ending someone.

First of all, as ^ said, you didn't "lose equity". That's not how equity works. I don't know if you financed or bought outright.

If you financed, you will likely owe the bank roughly what you are going to get in return, since you had a 6K trade in. You lose the equity of the mustang as soon as you applied its value towards the Civic, so don't get hung up on that. If you owe the bank more money than insurance is paying out, that's what GAP coverage covers.

If you bought outright, you're going to get a cheque. Use it to buy whatever you want.

In either case, insurance is supposed to work WITH you. You can argue to raise your car's valuation given how new it is. Work with your agent.

As for the mechanic/bodyshop, whom you seem to think is milking it just to get their pockets lined, consider this - if this is your first crash in 22 or whatever years, you basically have no idea how much it costs to fix shit now a days.

Lastly, how on earth are you getting scammed? It's in absolutely nobody's best interest to total your car. The bodyshop would make money only by actually fixing your car - if it's a write-off, they don't fix it. Insurance would want to pay the smallest amount, so they have no vested interest there as well. And as I asked above, do you really want to drive around a car that's been in a sizeable accident and then fixed? So who is scamming you?

 

[Snoopyslr]

The mechanical times for that are manually lined would be the only questionable items I see. That is only $1200 of the estimate though. The field adjuster should be able to negotiate those down.

I would rather the vehicle be totaled though, you don't want to be going back and forth with various electrical errors etc.

You vehicle should be valued at around $25,000, I do not understand the $20,000 amount you are noting.

If I get in an accident with my car, I absolutely would rather it be totaled than 40% of the vehicle repaired. I plan on keeping this car for 10+ years tho.

 

[slayerx02]

Even though the outside damage may not "look" too bad, the crumple zones may have been compromised and other various frame damage that is not immediately obvious will need a complete strip down, inspection, and frame alignment which will cost a lot of labor (this is biggest cost usually) hours not to mention the parts. How much was your total financed for the car and what is your collision coverage limits? (30,000, 70,000 etc)

 

[josby]

If you're not happy with how long the shop is taking on this, and you think they are inflating the bill, find another shop who works with your insurance and have the car towed there.

Regardless, make sure your insurance company knows the shop broke the windshield. If I were the insurance company, I would make the shop eat that $800 for the windshield replacement. It was their fault and the insurance shouldn't pay for it.

Some of those charges do seem weird. From the Remove & Install for the side mirrors and door handles and door edge guards, it looks like they're planning to repaint the doors. Hard to tell from the pics if the front edges of the doors got messed up or not though.

The threshold for totalling a car in your state is 75%. NADA retail for your car is $24,875. $15,000 is only like 60% of that, so it doesn't look like it should be getting totalled.

 

[DavidJBrooks]

It sounds high, but the estimate doesn't seem unreasonable.

Don't forget that your touring is 9/10ts of a self-driving car, and for those safety features to remain "safe", all of the wiring, sensors and other fancy do-dads need to be working right - not to mention the tightly-packed engine compartment and frame designed to sacrifice itself to save you in an event like this.

I've been in two minor "parking lot" scrapes (<4mph), neither of which I even bothered to fix - but both times, my insurance company asked if I had child seats in the car (which I did, even though they were unoccupied and absolutely unaffected) and both times they sent me checks to replace them.

When safety features are involved, everything even remotely related gets R&R, including the wiring. They might even be mandated by law to do so - but even if not, the insurance company probably requires their "authorized repair facilities" to - and even if the insurance company doesn't require it, the shop's business liability insurance might. And even if their business insurance didn't, common sense does.

Pray it gets totalled. You don't want to drive that car any more. If you feel like you're getting screwed, buy it back as-is, part it out, and recoup your money. Otherwise, chalk it up to live-and-learn, and remember that a bit of extra distance between you and the car ahead of you (and an enhanced awareness of the other idiots around you) might save you a bit of coin next time, even if it isn't technically your fault.

Also - my philosophy is to never enter into a financial transaction if I can't handle a worst case scenario. GAP insurance is like PMI (mortgage insurance) - it's you buying insurance to protect the bank. If you can't put down a big enough down payment (cash + sensible trade in) on a new car to cover the huge depreciation hit in the first two years (and therefore eliminating the need to worry about GAP), it might make sense to reconsider that purchase.

 

[mno86]

I had a similar issue with my 2012 Si coupe. I rear ended someone lightly from ice. His SUV had no damage and mine didn't look bad- hood was pushed a bit and a quarter sized spot of the fender pushed up, bumper lightly cracked and headlight as well.

It ended up being close to $7K. I was floored how that was possible. But the break out of repairs made sense. There's SO much on these cars compared to old ones and they're designed to crumple like paper in an accident.

It doesn't take much.

Sorry about the accident - if your ship isn't keeping you informed, raise a stink and write a review- they took care of me and paid for my whole 21 days of rental because a week turned into three.

 

[Julie1012]

Check your purchase invoice, you might have gap insurance and not realize it. My touring has $11,000 worth of damage and they are fixing it. It'll never be the same and it's no longer worth what it was before the accident. I have gap so I'd be better off if it was totaled.

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