Car got totaled

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This is my insurance company...I used to like them, but after this I'm never recommending Liberty Mutual.
 
they were good to me.... but then they sold me off to safeco. so, there's that.

i'm shopping for a new provider again soon. a few more months for my last ticket to fall off the 3 year radar :X
 
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.
 
Thought I'd give a final update as the claim is now complete.

The appraisal clause process did take a while, but I'm quite happy with the ending. The final total that I'm getting is $21,177.

For the appraisal I had to pay $135 out of pocket, but for over $2,000 more I'm super happy with the outcome. It been a pain in the ass through the process, but the appraisal cause was pretty painless just took a while to complete. The company that I worked with was super easy too...I gave them the CCC One report and they got back to me a day later and said that there's definitely value on the table so I paid the $135 for the report from them. If they'd have felt the original assessment was fair they'd tell me and say its not worth paying for the report. So it's really a no brainer to get them involved if you think there might be more value.

As for my replacement car, I ended up going small SUV as my wife and I are expecting our first child. I was able to get a super good deal on the last 2018 Audi Q5 on the lot on January 2nd which was the last day of their fiscal year and so far I really like it.
 
"last day of their fiscal year" means they dated all the sales paperwork dec 31st, with a pickup date of 1/2
gotta love car salesman.
same thing happened on my Rav4.
I was like ooh, I noticed a 12/31 date on all these documents... yea, its our last day to close out year end.
mmm hmmm, got it :thumbsup:

Congrats on the minor win over the insurance company, nice to hear a positive story once in a while. 90% of people would have just walked away with the insurance check and been done with it.
 
As for my replacement car, I ended up going small SUV as my wife and I are expecting our first child. I was able to get a super good deal on the last 2018 Audi Q5 on the lot on January 2nd which was the last day of their fiscal year and so far I really like it.

Congrats on the little one. I have a 2 week old. Greatest thing we've ever done.

And wife got a CX-9 for it, and I have a F-150 Supercrew. Funny as she was born in a snowstorm and we had 15 inches of snow in my culdesac with 5 fresh when I pulled on induction date.

Also, love having the room in the Mazda versus the BMW we traded in. We've loaded it up probably 7x for appointments. (Complications galore).
 
Congrats for you too! Yeah we're super excited but still have a ways to go. Wife currently has a 2015 CRV, but we'll probably be upgrading her to something larger once she hits 100k miles here in a couple more years.

So far I'm liking the extra room in the Q5, its definitely easier to get stuff in and out of vs the A4.
 
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