A common car is easy to total, a “rare” car is not. When the E300D got smacked USAA could not find a local enough comparable, and had to do a nationwide search. In 2013 there fewer than four examples to be had and the lowest was $9800.
Clay inter urinas et faeces nascimur > On Oct 5, 2021, at 11:09 AM, Karl Wittnebel via Mercedes > <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > > It works like this: > > Usaa uses an outfit called CCC to appraise the cars. CCC know nothing about > 25yo Mercedes values. They literally google the car and find some similar > ones listed for sale, then use these as the basis for their comps. > > If the repair approaches the CCC number, or a certain percentage of it, > they seem the car a total loss and Copart starts calling you to get you to > release the vehicle from your body shop. Of course this is irritating if > you feel you are being lowballed. > > The comps are supposed to be within 90 days. They do not provide details of > the cars condition or mileage. They are supposed to be as close to the > damaged car geographically as possible. In my case the comps provided were > in Minnesota, Atlanta and I forget the third. One of them was actually an > e320, if that gives any indication of the knowledge of CCC appraisers or > their attention to detail. > > USAA decides based on this whether to total the car out. If the owner > disagrees, the owner can place several useless calls over several weeks to > USAA telling them that they disagree, and emailing a bunch of comps that > reflect the true value of the car. All of this is likely to be pointless > however, as USAA has ballooned from about 500k members 5 years ago to over > 12 million today, and they are simply unable to hire and train people fast > enough to do the phone jobs. This was a result of the Board deciding to > open membership to anyone with an honorable discharge. > > After about six calls to different people without any type of response, the > body shop racks up over 6k in storage fees and you can start to use that as > a lever to get someone on the phone who knows how to tackle the situation. > > The policies say in writing that USAA can get an independent appraiser and > you can get an I dependent appraiser and those two people try to get > together on a value for the car. If they cannot, it goes to a mutually > agreed "umpire", but according to the appraiser I just hired, this happens > less than 1% of the time and usually they just agree. > > Now, if the agreed appraisal value is substantially more than the estimated > repair, they may consider repairing it rather than deeming it a total loss. > But it would have to be many thousands higher for them to consider that. > > So I expect them to total the car and raise my insurance rates, except I > will probably just drop collision anyway as it is too expensive compared to > the value of what I typically drive and I am starting to view it all as a > total scam, kind of like health insurance. But I digress. Again. > > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
