Apologies it’s a long read
Well it’s all settled now!
Heres the way it goes with Admiral and I guess their associated companies, when your faced with a write off.
1...someone calls and begins by offering Trade in values derived from Glasses guide. ADVICE...Counter this with lots of laughing and tell them you’ve been around the block a few times and fully undertand they’re working to their training script but lets get real here.
Quote their Policy document statement on “Market Value”. In my case this lifted their offer from £10600 to £11500 during the call, Oh by the way, the increase was because he liked me but would normally have offered this to someone who had bought their car from a main dealer and not privately as in my case. They then terminate the call with...”this is our best offer and if not satisfied refer you to the Motoring Ombudsman”.
I sent an email to the claims department deriding their disingenuous offer and the biased Motoring industry funded Ombudsman who by the way rated a Trust Pilot customer review rate of 2% who found them to be good and 98% who found them to be crap!
2...next day a different person called and after repeating my disgust offered £12040, the highest Glasses guide valuation they could offer and if not satisfied referred me to their colleague the Ombudsman. I again refused their offer and use of the Ombudsman.
3...I called the dealership who serviced my 350 and daughters 370 to ask for help on the Glasses guide. They informed me that they would buy the 370 in for between £10000 & £11000 and would put it on the forcourt for £13750.
4... I called the claims dep again and spoke to yet another person, explaining my dealerships statement and the results of my own online valuations all of which indicted a higher price should be offered and I would settle for £13750, which was less then I would have to pay to replace the car (I would have settled for £13k as it happens).
This call turned out to be beneficial because after relaying the previous conversations she said they could carry out a 3 valuation report, something not mentioned by her other colleagues. This involved getting valuations from HPI, Glasses Guide and Parker’s, bear in mind that my own research and free valuations indicated that glasses and Parker’s were always the lowest and Parker’s quote theirs for a car with 90K miles so you have to pro-rata the milage, I used £60/1k miles.
5...They called back about two days later, this time it was the girl who offered her max price of £12040 (the max she could possible offer remember) She said I would be pleased to know that HPI came in with the highest valuation at £13200 and this was their 3rd final offer, or was it their 4th?
6 Having accepted this offer I sat back gave a big sigh but then recalled that my HPI valuation was £13450 no £13200.
7 next day called them again, got a different person again, relayed the progress to date and my disgust at being fiddled out of £250 and demanded to know why. He was unable to explain and said he would have his manager call me back in the next 24hrs. I backed this conversation up with an email (as I did for all telephone conversations).
8 Next day I called HPI myself. They couldn’t understand why the difference so ran another valuation which came in at £13595 and suggested this is what I should have been offered.
9 Admirals claims dept manager didn’t call so I called him, explained the history and wanted an answer. After lots of computer clicking and Oh I’m so sorry the computers slow today etc etc I finally got an unexpected answer. Apparently they pay out the valuation received on the day of the accident, when I ran my valuation sometime later it had increased by £250 and when HPI ran theirs again a while later it had increased again. Didnt know valuations went up/down over such short time scales!
Anyway I accepted his explanation and settled.
10 THE MORAL OF THE STORY.....Dig you heels in, do your own research, assume their objective is to pay out as little as they can get away with, and for me pay a bit more for the Premium and go with a better company like NFU or Saga.
