A friend of mine went through something very similar recently. He had an accident (his fault) with his '56 T - Bird a couple years ago. JC Taylor paid to have it fixed. It was something like $25K that time.
About two years ago he had another accident in the car. This one was much worse, the car needed the RH front fender. grille, bumper, hood, suspension, wheel, tire etc all replaced. He had an agreed value policy at $35,000 which is about what his driver quality '56 is worth. The repair estimate exceeded $50K so JC Taylor totalled the car.
Long story short he worked out that Taylor would pay the body shop that amount. He paid the rest out of pocket and got to keep his car. JC Taylor cancelled him due to multiple payouts.
Bill, I just read this post again and figured out what you were saying. The agreed value on my Corvette is $32,950. American Collectors pays that out if the car is a total loss. Their threshold to declare it a total loss is $24,712.50 or 75%. Once they hit that mark, they jump straight to the agreed-value payout even though the final repair bill would be about $5K less.
I had to pull the key numbers out of the claims rep and figure out that we could avoid the total loss determination as long as American Collectors didnt hit that threshold number. The shop I’m working with is a Corvette restoration shop and they agreed to revise their bill to keep the car in my hands with a clean title.
I’m just frosted that the insurance company waited until the car was practically done to change their repair decision and then present it to me with two bad choices. I wanted to give others a heads-up that the repair decision isn’t final until the insurance company cuts the last repair check.
Sorry that this ever happened, Bill. Sucks. Sorry for the phone post jibberish as well…
I hope it all works out. I just don’t get how they can avoid paying you up to the face value of the policy. I am sure you have looked into it. It jsut seems so unfair and deceptive to me.
My experience with a classic car clime was back in the early 2000’s when my 70 Eliminator clone, “Badcatt” got rear ended and totaled. Being it was not my fault I was able to get exactly what I wanted from his insurance co. Especially after I accidently found his body shop that had repaired his truck several times from his “at fault” accidents.
My other experience with totaling a car and insurance came when my 2015 Focus got hit. My insurance adjustor though it was about 6K in damage. It got sent to one of there preferred shops near home. First estimate from them was a total loss but under full value. The insurance company insisted on a better estimate. It came back at over 13K on a car worth just over 13K. It had a lot of hidden damage from being hit and pushed in to pick up. I kind of miss that ride. It was cheep to operate.
I would think that if the insurance company agreed to pay the shop to do the work then they would be the ones on the hook for the shop’s bill, not you.
You shouldn’t have to give them your car AND pay for the shop bill. That’s ridiculous.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, they will only pay the agreed value. Whether they pay the shop or I do, it still comes out of that number. It would be much better if they stated up front their maximum payout for repair so the shop and car owner could plan appropriately.
My advice to anyone with an agreed-value policry is to know what that max repair payout is, in addition to the agreed value, and stay on top of the numbers as they develop.
I filed a claim with Heacock back in November of 2019 when Bambi ran into my Eliminator. I had no problems with them what so ever. I took it to my prefered shop for a repair estimate and furnished them with prices for replacement pieces from WCCC.