Car Insurance Company Lowballing Payment for Totaled Car

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone, I am currently dealing with the car insurance company because someone totaled my car. They do not appear to be making a good faith effort to estimate the actual cash value to determine the appropriate payout. The company is using wonky math to decrease the estimated value of comparable vehicles artificially. They are making a nonlinear adjustment for car mileage, where the cars with the lowest mileage are getting credited approximately twice as much as a value adjustment per mile as the cars with higher mileage levels. Unsurprisingly, 7/8 of the comparable cars use in this report also have lower mileage than my car (which will further bias the estimated value of my car lower). The reference data and adjustment formulas for the CCC One report that most insurance companies used appear to be cherry-picked to reduce the estimated value of cars and minimize insurance payouts. They also included a "condition adjustment" for all 8 vehicles, subtracting an identical amount from the values before calculating my payout. Has anyone had success challenging the amount an insurance company is offering for your car and if so what did you do?

[Anonymous]

You need to go online and find actual reasonable comps for your vehicle and send them to the adjuster. Here are five cars with the same make/model/age and similar mileage as my car, this is what it will actually cost to replace my car.

[Anonymous]

I disputed the value to get another $500 on the value. Because I had to buy another car quick, I had to pay $8K more to get the equipment I wanted. I also spent time doing that and not on something else that ended up costing me a couple hundred bucks.

Agree with find 5 cars you consider replacements and share VINS with adjuster. They may be able to get approval for some increase.

Low mileage cars do sometimes get a big bump - like popular import cars.

[Anonymous]

PP. In the end, not sure the effort to get $500 more was worth it.

[Anonymous]

You need to find comps. It's just like arguing with a real estate appraiser. Make them find comps to if they are low balling you. I had an adjuster lowball me and I challenged them to find a single comparable care for the amount they were offering. I ended up getting within $100 of what I wanted.

[Anonymous]

I've gotten more for providing receipts for recent repairs and improvements but also for making sure they were pricing the correct package and options for my car. What data can you provide on condition for your vehicle vs. their comps?

Also do you have data that the mileage adjustment shouldn't be linear? What assumptions do KBB and NADA use? You should be able to determine whether they think it's linear or not. if they use linear, or you find prices for comps in the real world change linearly, then I would present that data to them.

They want to get rid of you/close the claim, so the more of a pain you are to them, the more you might get.

I assume they've added taxes, tags, registration already?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've gotten more for providing receipts for recent repairs and improvements but also for making sure they were pricing the correct package and options for my car. What data can you provide on condition for your vehicle vs. their comps?

Also do you have data that the mileage adjustment shouldn't be linear? What assumptions do KBB and NADA use? You should be able to determine whether they think it's linear or not. if they use linear, or you find prices for comps in the real world change linearly, then I would present that data to them.

They want to get rid of you/close the claim, so the more of a pain you are to them, the more you might get.

I assume they've added taxes, tags, registration already?

I just looked at my report from 2016 and they did use linear at 1.5 cents a mile. Our car had 225k and comps had 172k down to 81k. This was done by AutoSource.

[Anonymous]

Use online car value estimators Kelly Blue Book,
Edmunds True market Value and email them if their offer is less.

[Anonymous]

I had the same issue OP, but insurance company wouldn't budge. I sent them comps, but they said they have some type of algorithm lmao. You can't assess a cars value accurately via an algorithm. A lot of the cars for sale are auction vehicles with no maintenance history and the listed condition is in no way accurate.

[Anonymous]

Find your cars duplicate on carmax. Send them link.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've gotten more for providing receipts for recent repairs and improvements but also for making sure they were pricing the correct package and options for my car. What data can you provide on condition for your vehicle vs. their comps?

Also do you have data that the mileage adjustment shouldn't be linear? What assumptions do KBB and NADA use? You should be able to determine whether they think it's linear or not. if they use linear, or you find prices for comps in the real world change linearly, then I would present that data to them.

They want to get rid of you/close the claim, so the more of a pain you are to them, the more you might get.

I assume they've added taxes, tags, registration already?

The mileage adjustment is currently not linear. They cars with lower mileage than my car are getting a larger adjustment per mile than the car with more mileage. For the the car with more mileage they are only adding 4.8 cents per mile to adjust the comparable cars value. The marginal rate of adjustment per mile is increasing the lower the mileage on the car. So the mileage adjustment (for cars with less mileage) starts around 5.7 cents per mille, but the marginal adjustment increases to 11.4 cents per mile for the car with the lowest mileage. Eg. For the Car with 8000 more miles they are providing an adjustment of +$381 for the comparable value. The car with 9,100 less miles is getting and adjustment of -$525 for comparable value. The comparable car with 27,050 less miles is getting an adjustment of -$2251.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had the same issue OP, but insurance company wouldn't budge. I sent them comps, but they said they have some type of algorithm lmao. You can't assess a cars value accurately via an algorithm. A lot of the cars for sale are auction vehicles with no maintenance history and the listed condition is in no way accurate.

Did you have the valuation report? I'm 16:31, we've had 3 totaled cars and got the valuation increased on 2 of them. The other one matched NADA which I thought was fair. If anything, once they get the details of our car accurate, they've tended to value them in better condition than they actually are because they don't specifically dock you for old tires or anything else like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've gotten more for providing receipts for recent repairs and improvements but also for making sure they were pricing the correct package and options for my car. What data can you provide on condition for your vehicle vs. their comps?

Also do you have data that the mileage adjustment shouldn't be linear? What assumptions do KBB and NADA use? You should be able to determine whether they think it's linear or not. if they use linear, or you find prices for comps in the real world change linearly, then I would present that data to them.

They want to get rid of you/close the claim, so the more of a pain you are to them, the more you might get.

I assume they've added taxes, tags, registration already?

I just looked at my report from 2016 and they did use linear at 1.5 cents a mile. Our car had 225k and comps had 172k down to 81k. This was done by AutoSource.

Yes mine is not linear it and it irritating me because it appears they are intentionally skewing the numbers with a non-linear formula to justify a lower payout. The formula gives smaller adjustment per mile for the car with more miles than mine and it gives the largest adjustment per mile for the comparable car with the lowest miles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've gotten more for providing receipts for recent repairs and improvements but also for making sure they were pricing the correct package and options for my car. What data can you provide on condition for your vehicle vs. their comps?

Also do you have data that the mileage adjustment shouldn't be linear? What assumptions do KBB and NADA use? You should be able to determine whether they think it's linear or not. if they use linear, or you find prices for comps in the real world change linearly, then I would present that data to them.

They want to get rid of you/close the claim, so the more of a pain you are to them, the more you might get.

I assume they've added taxes, tags, registration already?

The mileage adjustment is currently not linear. They cars with lower mileage than my car are getting a larger adjustment per mile than the car with more mileage. For the the car with more mileage they are only adding 4.8 cents per mile to adjust the comparable cars value. The marginal rate of adjustment per mile is increasing the lower the mileage on the car. So the mileage adjustment (for cars with less mileage) starts around 5.7 cents per mille, but the marginal adjustment increases to 11.4 cents per mile for the car with the lowest mileage. Eg. For the Car with 8000 more miles they are providing an adjustment of +$381 for the comparable value. The car with 9,100 less miles is getting and adjustment of -$525 for comparable value. The comparable car with 27,050 less miles is getting an adjustment of -$2251.

I believe you that the the insurance company isn't using a linear mileage assumption. What I'm asking is what proof you have that it shouldn't be? What relationships are you seeing elsewhere? You have my anecdote from 2016, but that was a different time and a really high mileage car. I might expect a non-linear relationship at the lower end because those are the cars people want. There probably wouldn't have been much demand for my car with 225k miles or the ones with 1xxk, and there are even plenty of people who wouldn't purchase a car with 81k miles, which was the lowest comp for mine.

So linear may have been a better assumption in my case than if your car has 35k or something. The market may price in people getting nervous at thresholds like 36k or wherever warranties end now and 50k or other mileage people really want to stay under when buying used. If you want to fight it, I think you need to give some proof that some source is showing a linear relationship.

[Anonymous]

Yes - we have been successful - you need to send in actual comps and put a package together with them that show what you expect to get. Also identify any upgrades etc. that your car may have had in addition to the amount etc. the worst they can do is say NO but we have been successful before.