Watched Rip Off Britain this morning and there was a bloke who values his car at say £17k due to what was recommended by a comparison site. He makes a claim and the loss adjuster says it’s worth more at say £21k and as such they only paid out for the £17k. Hmm, if I put SWMBOs Nissan Note in as £30k and it gets stolen then I will expect a pay out of that amount! Unless of course the insurance company not only wants their slice of cake, but they want to eat it as well! :-)

I assume the premium was calculated on the £17k value.

Of course, but how many times do you enter a value for your car on which you pay premiums but when you have a full loss they make a pay out at a much lower rate! They clearly want it both ways!

Unless you get an official valuation for your (rather special) vehicle, I doubt that an insurer will offer you more than market value, as they are only obliged to restore you to your status-quo before the accident. You may haggle about that valuation, perhaps with advantage, but if you offered a valuation of your own, why should you expect more ?

Edited by Andrew-T on 09/07/2020 at 14:09

When they ask you the cars value its meaningless. If a car has an accident or stolen and is an uneconomic repair/total loss the ££££'s they will offer are based on the the theoretical cost to replace with an identical vehicle.

The only time you would possibly get the figure you state is if its an agreed value policy on a classic. The value is normally provided by a specialist that is approved by the insurers.

If you have a car with lots of extras and it is all too easy to add over £10k to a cars value then it is probably best to talk to your insurance when taking out a policy or you could be left looking at pay out on the value of the base model.

That is why they ask you the exact model details and also ask about about any factory fitted extras. In my experience they rarely affect the premium.

But you need to be totally honest, buying a 3 litre turbo nutter version and insuring it as a 1.3 shopping trolley version will not end well.

Why would you even go with what a comparison site says?

Plus you can alter their predefined value as you proceed.