A Sad Tale, a battle with insurance company

[igotone]

Back in July on a wet weekend my sexy? mark one K reg xm estste suprised me by winning 2 concours prizes at the Scottish section Rally and i was over the moon and full of pride and was ready to carry on the improvements on her to carry off next years prizes. The following Friday weather much improved a motorcyclist tried to overtake me when i was overtaking another car and hit the side of me no magor damage but enough. I had to tell insurance company as i expect a claim from injured Biker. So you guessed it car a cat d write off valuation £375 not top book cause the milage 130,000 above ave! ave book is only 113,000 or 7555 a year????? many phone calls and sending of pics and xm adverts later this has been raised to £500 ie top glasses guide. so if any of you know a exellent concours winning xm estste 1992 manual si going for £500 please tell me!!!!!
Seriously if anybody knows where an advert for a 1992 xm estate of good quality is at any price expect it to be around £1500 can they contact me with it please.
Also does anybody have the figures for how many were sold that year as mk1 coming to an end would be good to know. Think also someone should now insure these as classics so we can get agreed valuations .
well thanks for reading my rantings I hope when sorted i can restore her to her former Glory with your help.

[bigjohnh]

For info,

I bumped in to an XM owner in a car park this weekend 300 miles from my home (as you do). Whilst comparing notes on our cars he informed me that his car was insured on an agreed value policy with Adrian Flux, worth a note for future reference.

His car was a very clean N registration (1995?) 42000 mile 2.0 tct saloon in metallic blue. I gave him the web address of our forum and hopefully he will appear here soon.

John

[xmexclusive]

Hi All

Adrian Flux advertises in the Citroen Car Club Mag. Offers a 15% discount for CCC members. tel. is 0800 505 3000. www.adrianflux.co.uk
email quotes@adrianflux.co.uk.

Regards

XMexc

This post has been edited by xmexclusive on September 04, 2007 01:28 pm

[igotone]

Well thanks for that funny they didnt mention it when they gave me an outragously non competitive quote just before accident happened oh well I am still fighting them as the car is useable aqnd is not a cat d till i agree then i have 8 weeks to get new mot to them. so i just hope someone will advertise one somewhere .

[dean]

Hi all

I find it ridiculous how such a good car can have such little value, Mine is in an "above average condition" at least when i was thinking of part exchanging it on another car a couple of years back (thankfully i didn't), bearing in mind 61k FSH a/c leather etc etc 10 mnth m.o.t 11mnth tax, and i was offered....................£125

[igotone]

Well yes especialy when the same guys try to sell it to us at £700 over book price as an exceptional model for its year plenty of good mk2 estates just 1.5 years newer going for £1500+
dont spose anyone got a copy of glasses car values have they?
sorry if anyone is an insurance assesor but these ones dont know about XMs nor do they want to (mite have to do some work)
ohhhh im bitter and twisted aint i lol

This post has been edited by igotone on September 04, 2007 07:06 pm

[mackay1]

Hi,

Really sorry to hear about your accident. I saw you collecting your awards at Galashiels - a nice XM estate. £375 - what a load of tosh. I hope you get it sorted out quickly and get the car back on the road.

The W Reg V6 24v I had for a while had suffered the same problem. The car had done 17,000 miles from new, 1 elderly owner, garaged and serviced and he claimed never to have had it above 60mph! One day he decided to pull out quickly at a T junction but when he put the boot down it took him by surprise and before he had a chance to turn right onto the main road he'd parked the front of the car in a tree on the grass verge on the opposite side.

He had to fight tooth and nail to get the insurers (Churchill I think) to increase their offer to a miserable £4k.

It was repaired and I bought it. Having moved the mileage to 22.5k I sold it relatively quickly for £6,800 with the accident damaged blemish on its record - so how accurate was their original valuation? (Presumably the car might have been worth more with the lower mileage and without the accident history.)

One of the problems apparently was the lack of a book value for any XM beyond 98 - and no book value for the late V6 cars at all (so I'm told). It was valued based on a '98 2.0l Exclusive.

I don't suppose the history of that car would help you much - but if you want it I can give you some supporting evidence. Presumably you've drawn their attention to the differential between WHM prices and the corresponding book value of their cars? I suppose the biggest obstacle you have though is the mileage.

I doubt Adrian Flux would help with agreed valuation of any car below 20 years. I've tried them and recently tried another (Footman James) who may be doing some special deal for CCC members shortly. Both refused to consider any car under that age - unless it was of some special historic interest - i.e. a prototype or one off or similar.

I do think it's one of the biggest problems XM owners face. How do you replace a really good example - particularly one with low mileage - with the sort of money an insurer would give you. Not easy.

I hope you get a fair settlement from them in the end.

Good luck

Roy

[dean]

Hi

The same bloke who offered me £125 had a rough L reg saloon on the forecourt 6 months later, it was a base model 20i auto and he wanted £1700 with broken fog light crazed lacquer on the roof and a ding in the wing...... still there now, almost 18 months later but hes dropped the price to £1200.
Don't blame you for being bitter though, just hope you get it sorted.

Dean

[mackay1]

Hi,

Just a further thought. Since you're a CCC member - would the club be able to give you a little help/support on this. Brian Drummond is involved (I think) in agreed valuations and although your car isn't 20 years old - he may be able to give you something to support your position. The CCC seem to be able to provide figures the insurance industry accept. After all your 2 awards should count for something - and 2 judges did give your car a fair going over.

Might be worth a shot if they won't budge!?

Roy

[igotone]

Well yes i thought they mite take somthing from the car club but no its only an opinion not a hard fact they said and they have a hard fact ie glasses guide and unless i find a 1992 xm estate for more money they aint going to budge.
now funny talked to the customer service dept and asked to speak to a manager someone took my details and said a customer service manager would get back to me within 24 hours guees what? no call ..... well what did i expect someone to do their job ).

[xmexclusive]

Hi All

A word of caution on agreed insurance values for classic cars. The annual mileage limits and garaging requirements were rather restrictive when I enquired. Asking CCC to help with negotiations on value is well worth trying.

Regards

XMexc

[rowanmoor]

Good luck.

I had the same battle with my XM a couple of years ago. They valued it at £900 - I printed out a list from autotrader of all 2.5s listed for sale in the country (all 4 of them) and pointed out that the cheapest one was same mileage, condition etc as mine at £3000. I also found an MOT failure 'spares or repair' for them at about £1500. They sent me some printouts of 2.0s, Mk1s and a Xantia to support their £900!

They had already flagged it as a writeoff before they even got back to me as well!

In the end I managed to get them to do about £1700 (a 'special unpublished glasses price he got from the glasses helpline for exceptional condition cars') and sell back to me for scrap for £80 or something like that. Given that the repair quote I had given them was £1700 I figured it was close enough. The car has a writeoff to it's name, but I figure that I don't intend to sell it till it is spares or to an enthusiast who would read past that anyway.

I do have the satisfaction of knowing that I must have cost the insurance company a few thousand in admin costs the amount I was on the phone to them, getting correspondence from them, dragging it on so they were being charged storage etc. They would have been far better off just paying for the repair in the first place

I choose my insurance company wisely now (will never touch Admiral or any of their trading names again). I had a friend to had a writeoff (structural so he wasn't thinking about repair like I was) who was given a quote from glasses. He wanted to try and get it raised a bit so he called and they said 'fax over 3 printouts from autotrader to support it'. He faxed over the 3 highest priced ones (it was a far more common car so he had loads including some silly price ones to choose from) expecting them to split the difference. They averaged the 3 he sent and gave him a cheque - no questions. That was Direct Line. They must have figured paing way over the odds was cheeper than the admin cost of arguing.

[Ken newbold]

I have a really nice xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx very nice MK1 estate here with £130k on the clock which I could be persuaded to advertise for sale for £1100 if I knew anyone was interested

[stu]

You have my sympathy, igotone. I'm going through the same thing with my beautiful Mark 1 BX. Perfect condition, extremely rare, 68,000 miles... £300. Best of luck. I haven't managed to gather much evidence as to its value, but I'm sending what I have today.

[Ken newbold]

Arrr Stu, welcome from the dark side