Insurance write-off, advice please

Hi SV650-ers

Recently i was involved in a crash, not my fault (guy coming the wrong way round a 1-way system). He accepted liability etc, and pretty quickly his insurer, Tesco, contacted me, arranged a hire bike and collected my bike to value/assess. They called me today, and said they've had the engineers report and they are writing the bike off, cat D.
The bike is a K5 650S, bought new on 0% finance in June last year, at list price, with ~12k on the clock and a reasonable amount of wear and tear, nothing major but little chips here and there.
They've valued the bike at 3037.50 prior to the accident, and "salvage value" of £600 now, so they are offering me ~£2400 and my broken bike back.
My initial response was they could shove it, the £2400 wouldnt even cover the balance of my credit, leaving me in debt and bikeless, but i've since wound my neck in and would like some advice on the best approach.
My instinct response is that as the third party in an accident, their responsibility it to recompense me to the level at which i wont have "lost out" as a result of the accident, it shouldn't be down to me to deal with the damaged bike, hunt down a replacement etc. I am putting in a separate compensation claim, so i guess any "shortage" could be addressed that way, but that's going to take some time.
The damage to the bike is purely cosmetic, it will need a new half-fairing, screen, tank, new bar ends, break/gear lever/mirrors/indicators. And as far as i remember, that's all it will need, Cat D being no mechanical damage, so potentially taking the £2400 and bike, sourcing the parts and fixing it could turn me a profit, in exchange for time and hassle.
From a legal standpoint, do i have to accept the insurance company's offer? Do i even have to accept anything from them at all, or can i just take my broken bike back, get a repair estimate at a local garage and bill Tesco for it? Should i have thought of that before letting them take the old bike? And does taking the money and fixing the bike seem viable to peeps given the damage as described above?
Cheers for any help, the guy from Tesco who phoned me today seemed pretty insistent that i needed to take the offer today, but i'm a little worried i might commit to something that's just going to lose me money.

[Biker Biggles]

The usual advice is dont take the first offer.Trawl a few dealers and small ads to get evidence that other similar bikes cost more and send them off to the insurance co.
As for taking your bike back and fixing it,that's up to you,and many people do that and make money out of it.You always have the option of telling them to keep the bike and give you the full value.
And you are quite right about making up any shortfall on their valuation with your other claim.I take it you had lots of damaged kit and a few injuries?

[Stu]

Don't need to accept today!
I would take the £2400 (or as much as you can) repair the bike & be left with a bike almost as good as new (& you know the history but it will be devalued by HPI) & hopefully a chunk of loan paid off.

I wouldn't rely on cat D being no mechanical damage

I think you will get more mileage from arguing for a higher pre accident value than aguing to reduce the salvage value.
Ebay is your friend sourcing parts.

take the money and fix the bike, i would.

£3037 seems a very good offer to me. There are a lot of one owner K6 that are not selling for £3000.

£600 for a cat d seems a reasonable price as well IMO.

Cheers all, having looked around i have to agree with ASM, the offer does seem pretty good. The guy's attitude just got my back up and it felt like he was trying to rush me so i thought id check it out.
The guy who phoned me said that they had "no interest" in keeping the bike and giving me the full payout, is that tactical phrasing for they will or wont do it? Should be asking them not you guys i guess :P
I'll have to weigh up my options and time, i need the bike daily for work, but there's the possibility my license is going to be revoked in a couple of weeks anyway so i'd have a few weeks off the road to play bike fixing.
Biggles - Yes i have damaged kit, time off work and broken big toe and other injuries to claim for. (head on collision with a car and i manage to break a big toe...go figure). Plus my now insurmountable fear of one-way streets

Just to be clear, you are under no obligation to take the bike back, if you do not want to! However in most cases it is worthwhile as you can fix it up/sell it immediately for more than you paid for salvage.

It may be worthwhile trying to get them to up their offer. Some people will tell you to never accept the first offer, but if its a good valuation, then go for it. I accepted the first offer on my bike. You should consider whether the hassle and time without the money is worth trying to argue the valuation. Your offer is already on the higher end of the scale so i personally wouldn't bother.

DO NOT ACCEPT FIRST OFFER!
I didnt and got a better payout from them!
look up on things like mcn/parkers/bike trader the same year/model and roughly milage-send off to the insurance company with a letter pointing out that those bikes are same as yours etc so thats the price you are looking at getting back
Its worth a go, i did it and was pleased with the result

[Ratty]

It's always worth a haggle. Mrs Ratty had her Clio stolen recently. Direct Line offered her £3885 which we declined. They put us onto the Engineering company who supply the Glasse's guide quotes and they moved up to £4085. Still not happy with this we explained that we couldn't find the equivalent car at this value because the 1.2 Extreme 2 model with 5 doors was quite rare and usually held a better price. Direct Line said that this was their final offer and if we didn’t accept the only other thing we could do is submit a formal complaint in writing. This we did and backed it up through the ombudsman. Direct Line rang me today and said their Engineers had made a mistake and they had reviewed the local market. They have now offered me £4500 which is what I paid twelve months ago. That £615 pounds more just through not accepting being bullied by the company.

Keep haggling

Ratty