You own a car that you have really cherished, cleaning and polishing it every week, making sure that it is properly serviced, sparing no expense when minor repairs have been necessary. The mileage is low considering the car's age, you are really proud of it and wouldn't swap it for any other! Then you have what looks like a minor bump.

Not to worry, it's fully insured. The insurance assessor comes round and looks at it, scratches his chin a few times and then tells you it is a total write-off! You can't understand this, there are only a few creased panels that need replacing or knocking out and then a bit of repainting necessary in your estimation, but he is adamant that putting the car back into good condition will cost more than it is worth. A short while later you receive an offer which is far less than you felt your car was worth, and worse than that, they propose to take your beloved machine away and scrap it! You search through the columns of cars for sale in your local newspaper and find that although you can indeed by a car for the settlement that you have been offered but every one you view looks more tired and has a higher mileage than your old trusty chariot. You have the classic problem, the insurance company has valued your vehicle by the book, which lays down a precise value for the average car of the same make, model and age as yours. It appears that even though the accident was no fault of yours, the result is going to be that you will end up with a vastly inferior car to the one that you started with.

How to get round this? The first thing you have to remember is that you are entitled under most insurance policies to be put back into the same situation that you were in before the accident. The second thing is that the insurance assessors verdict is not necessarily final; and the third is that everything in life is negotiable!

The strange fact is that in circumstances like this the vast majority of people meekly accept what they have been told, and take the settlement which has been offered. You have nothing to lose however by rejecting the settlement, and providing the relevant insurance company with reasons why their offer is inadequate. Ultimately if necessary you have the options of calling in an ombudsman or even taking the matter to your local County Court, provided that you are confident that you can prove good reason why the offer was not acceptable. It is very rare indeed, however, that it is necessary to go to these extremes because insurance companies find their costs can start to rise considerably if they get involved in disputes, and if you have a good case you may well be able to sway them into increasing their offer to one a little closer to your own valuation.

More importantly however, your old car which has a low mileage, has been well looked after and which you are very attached to has been condemned to the scrap yard! This is not necessarily the case however, and if you contact the insurer and make a reasonable offer to buy the vehicle back from them for a sum which is greater than its scrap value less the cost of collection and delivery to a scrap yard, it is highly likely that you will be able to take your pride and joy round to your local vehicle repair workshop where the damage panels can be knocked out or replaced with second hand ones, and the damaged paintwork touched up, and perhaps still walk away with a profit from your insurance settlement. Admittedly the car will now be classed as a category D. repaired write-off in the logbook, but if you never intend to sell it in the future anyway this won't really effect you.

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