Money Matters
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Cars - diminished value
Can someone tell me exactly how this works? My car was hit & run in a parking lot in November and it was just a little over a year old. The repairs have been made but I am pretty sure that since it had to have hood repair, a new bumper and new quarterpanel that I could DEFINITELY not get what I could get for it had it not been damaged. How do you approach your insurance company about this and can you ONLY approach them when you go to sell the vehicle? It's a pretty expensive car and I am sure I will get about $5K less for it now.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted and used against you. My Blog
Re: Cars - diminished value
Now would be the time to pursue it.
The best way would be to have an auto appraiser quantify the diminshed value (if anything). You could also do this yourself for free by taking it to several dealers and see what they'd give you for it in its current condition (repaired), as well as if it had never been wrecked. I think you'll find that the spread is actually pretty narrow and rarely worth pursuing.
Overall, because of the way cars depreciate, its difficult to prove diminished value on a vehicle that isn't very high end/collectors quality. Provided the repairs were properly done, the actual amount of diminished value you'd see is really negligble on most normal vehicles.
I do have an associate who was able to collect on diminished value on his limited edition Corvette. But his argument was that because it was a collector's piece, that no collector would pay full price for a car that was no longer 100% original. It is much harder to make the same argument for even most luxury cars today unless they are rare and high end.
Your car depreciated the minute you drove off the lot.
Your ins company will only pay to have the car repaired - not depreciation. Nothing was a structural (frame) issue and the other repairs should not negatively impact the value if they were done well.
Do you not plan to keep the car for a LONG time?
I just went through this, both cars were parked at the house and hit by a drunk driver. I demanded diminished value from my insurance company (which will be reimbursed by drunk driver's insurance). I got a check for about 20% of what the repairs to the car were. I could have argued for more, but I don't have the energy. It took less than 4 weeks and was super easy.
I found this to be not true at all. Depending on your state, my state my insurance was REQUIRED to pay diminished value due to an accident where I was not at fault.
Look into your state laws. Georgia has a law that all insurance companies must pay diminished value. That said, when I had my accident they made no mention of it and I'm the one who had to bring it up. I got a little over $800 for my 4 year old Accord Coupe EX. The damage to my vehicle was around $8,000. There is a formula that is commonly used by insurance companies to determine diminished value but I can't remember it anymore.
I'm convinced if I hadn't brought it up my insurance company would have not paid. I just happened to know the law b/c I work in insurance. I still wonder if they paid the other two drivers involved in the wreck.
The above example on a collectors car is probably going to be the best example of when you can fight for diminished value & get it fairly easily. I work for an insurance company and from my experience, you will only get what it costs to repair your vehicle or the cost to replace it based on the current value of the vehicle at the time of loss. Not too many companies will give you diminshed value because they are putting your car back to the condition it was prior to the accident. Insurance companies aren't required to give you diminished value (in most states). That doesn't mean you can't ask for it, a company may give it to you, but you have to ask at the time of the accident. You can't go back years later and ask for it. Just like with anything, you only have so long to make a claim.
From my own personal experience on selling/trading cars in, I've had accidents on cars and it didn't effect the value of my car. In fact sometimes it helped me out because on the hood or bumper where stones kicked up on the road did damage to those parts, they were fixed & in better shape. What effected the value of my car was the interior & exterior condition of my car at the time I went to sell/trade it in, the mileage, the features on the car, the age of the car and how desirable the type of car I was getting ride of (meaning was it a type of car that people were interested in or could be resold by the dealership easy).