Help! Insurance coming to take and auction my bike!

[TamSV]

Chase up the offer from your insurers - this has taken long enough.

You want two numbers from them - the write off value and a reduced amount for a cash settlement that lets you keep the bike.

Assuming you're happy with the valuation, you've got two options - take the full settlement and let them take your bike or take the reduced settlement and keep the bike. Your decision will be based on the difference between the offers, the cost and hassle for you to fix up the bike yourself and the reduced value when you come to sell a previously written off bike.

For various reasons, I wouldn't withdraw your claim at this stage and pursue the TP yourself. You could easily end up with nowt from them and then you'll be back where you are now.

Get this one dealt with first and you can decide what to do about the second incident. You could squeeze some more cash out of the situation but you'll then have two accidents on your record. Although both are non-fault, that's likely to affect your premiums in future.

If you haven't already notified the second accident to your insurers, and you get a good enough settlement from the first claim, you might be tempted to forget all about the second incident.

For future reference, if you're involved in an accident that's not your fault, get a decent accident management company to handle it for you. It makes life easier for you and gives you more options. They might also make a better job of explaining to you what's happening - it's pretty clear your broker is doing a very bad job of that at the moment.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by TamSV

For various reasons, I wouldn't withdraw your claim at this stage and pursue the TP yourself. You could easily end up with nowt from them and then you'll be back where you are now.

Actually, although contrary to my previous post, I think this is decent, pragmatic advice (as is the rest of the post - worth following). Sorry for any confusion caused.

Originally Posted by TamSV

For future reference, if you're involved in an accident that's not your fault, get a decent accident management company to handle it for you. It makes life easier for you and gives you more options. They might also make a better job of explaining to you what's happening - it's pretty clear your broker is doing a very bad job of that at the moment.

Agree there's sense in this. It's probably the poor service you've received from your own insurers that got my back up previously. Although I would do it myself rather than use a management firm, that's a personal preference more to do with my age and experience than anything else (I date back to a time when such management companies didn't really exist!)

Further thought: Worth considering a third party claim for any lost excess?

[brodie]

Apologies for my lack of response, I thought I was automatically subscribed to replies but it appears not.
Further updates, as this is still dragging on.

I pretty much followed the same line as suggested by TamSV as it goes. My situation currently is the first claim has made a valuation and offered a 40% cost for buy back. Initially i was willing to buy it back, but in light of this second incident I was in two minds; the further damage done to the steering is considerable enough that I wouldn't like to repair it myself, so adding a garage cost leaves me with a negligible amount to do the rest of the repairs, and I would essentially be repairing it for the love of it, at a financial loss.

With this in mind I wanted to see what the second claim might bring, the first insurance company have been dragging their heels and I have so far used that to my advantage in order to await the offer from the second incident.
Now the second claim have been given a quote and have been notified of the first incident, they wish to see what little they can offer, and are sending out an inspector (the same company as the first claim!) to value the bike before the incident and inspect the damage of the second.

Boy this gets complicated. Now i'm unsure whether to accept the first salvage offer - full buyout, not buy back - and forgo the second claim.

Ideally i would like to accept the first offer and still make a little on the second. If this seems greedy remember: I was willing to repair the damage from the first incident, the bike bike had value to me well beyond the resale value. Due to the second incident, the bike has no value, it now has cost, both financially and in my time. So i don't feel it's wrong to expect something from the second claim.

My quandary now is can i legitimately and legally accept the first buyout and continue with a claim on the second after inspection?

[TamSV]

There's no problem in getting something from both incidents but, assuming the insurers for the second incident are going to write the bike off too, then you won't be able to take a full settlement from both of them (because they'll both come to collect the salvage, which will cause a problem).

If you took the reduced cash settlement for the first incident and a full settlement from the second, and let insurer No.2 take the bike away, then that seems like a nice logical run of events.

You need to get the offer from insurer No.2 first. Bear in mind the bike's value has been reduced by the damage caused in the first incident so you can probably expect a lower offer this time round. Should still put you in front I'd have thought.

[brodie]

Originally Posted by TamSV

If you took the reduced cash settlement for the first incident and a full settlement from the second, and let insurer No.2 take the bike away, then that seems like a nice logical run of events.

Thanks for giving it some clarity, I was hoping this might be a reasonable scenario.

I have to hope now that I get a decent offer from insurer #2, and before insurer #1 decides to settle the claim.

I guess if #2 doesn't make an offer that improves on the difference of a buyback from #1, all things being equal I can simply take a full settlement from #1 and forgo any settlement from #2.

I can't imagine why #1 would have any complaint about further damage, seeing as it would be a full buyout on the value before the incident, but I can imagine that they may try to take issue with it, i'll have to wait and see, if the situation plays out that way.

[brodie]

Just thought i'd round off this thread in case anyone has a similar experience.

Finally got an offer from the second lot of insurers, the inspector they sent around (the same company as previous claim) said he couldn't value the bike more that £320 due to previous write-off. He then called back shortly after and said he'd value it just shy of the previous salvage cost, which would bring it in under a write-off with the second party and get me the best price.

I accepted the first claim with a buy back on salvage, and accepted the second pay-out, which brought the total payments to approx. the initial valuation of the bike, but below the figure i insured it for.

Now I will have the cash to make the repairs and get it back on the road. I'm not sure what two Cat D write offs will leave it's insurable value at once repairs are made, but I guess that's to come.

Annoyingly, some little sh1ts nicked it the other week, or attempted to at least. I found it a few streets over abandoned, steering lock broke, yoke cracked and ignition cable cut through. How they managed to snap the steering lock and roll it up the road with the alarm not disturbing me I don't know, as I found it still 'alarmed'.

I've been having a thorough look around the forum as now I have an opportunity to make some mods such as new forks, rear shock. I'm going to start a thread as I can't weed out the info i'm after, it's SV overload!

Thanks to all who offered up their advice and experience, much appreciated.