I've had nothing but good experience with our local agent, but this is making me reconsider. But what I'm finding out today makes me feel every insurance company pulls the same stuff. Geico, USAA, Allstate, and more all seem to use CCC One for total loss valuations.
My local agent reached out to the claims department and got a manager to call me and answer some additional questions I had. I explained to him that the 3 comps on the initial report are all not valid in my opinion. He mentioned that the report actually had 8 comps, but when I went back and reviewed the report only the highlighted 3 contain any deals about options and features. He mentioned that one comp was the same year A4 with only 23k miles and was listed for around the same price that they're offering me for a settlement. I asked him for details for that vehicle to validate that it had the same features and he said that not all comps compare full features.
Well doesn't that just give me warm feelings about how they generate actual cash value. I did some more digging and found that the company that did the valuation is called CCC One, and there's people all over the internet discussing how ridiculous their appraisals are. It looks like in 2005 they also had a class action lawsuit in Illinois. I also noticed on the report that there as a deduction on my car for nearly $1400, so I asked the manager about that and was told that it was a dealer prep fee as all the comps were from dealers and my car was not dealer ready. That seems totally ridiculous to me, there's no way on a used car they'd do anything other than an inspection and a detail and it wouldn't cost anything near $1400.
Finally, I went ahead and started the appraisal clause with Liberty Mutual and my appraisers report just came back and its $1800 higher than the CCC One report. Now Liberty Mutual will get their own independent appraisal completed and then my company and their company will work on an agreed number. So we'll see what the outcome is.