Volvo Tizzy.

[swestrup]

I was awakified by taxlady at 11:00 am this morning because she was in somewhat of a tizzy. It seems the Insurance folks were not only ready to write-off our car, they had a rather low estimate of its current book value. Sufficiently low that replacing the car at that price would be rather difficult. Well, a bunch of phone calls later and things don't look so grim. The insurance company does indeed have a way to challenge its estimates and they were rather nice about the whole thing. (I'm getting to like this company more and more.) We just need to find two dealers who will testify in writing that the car is worth more than the insurance company said. We've already got one, and are working on finding another. Meanwhile we phoned our Volvo garage and they told us the Insurance company's repair assessment sounded awfully high, so they're sending someone over to see if they can give us a lower estimate. It also appears that they have 2 or 3 old Volvo's that will be in our price range even IF we don't get the value of the car increased.

So, instead of having no options, its beginning to look like we may have several (non-exclusive) ones:

1. Old car's write-off value may be increased enough that we can afford a replacement from our Volvo dealer.
2. We can buy a much cheaper replacement from our Volvo garage.
3. We may be able to get the car repaired instead of scrapped.

... As I was writing the above I just got some more news. Yes, the garage is able (and willing) to fix the old car for less than the write-off value, but the car has already been de-registered so any repairs will turn it into a 'rebuilt' car. Such a car has practically zero book value, so we would be screwed if we ever got into another fender bender. As a result, and considering our money situation we are seriously considering doing BOTH options 1 and 2 above and pocketing the difference. The end result will be that we will still have a Volvo or Saab, although perhaps not in as good a shape as our last one, and a bit of money in the bank.

So, in about an hour the two of us will head over to our Volvo garage and check out their offerings. That way we'll know exactly what condition these cheaper cars are in (at least visually -- we'll have whatever we are considering buying professionally inspected, of course.)

We're trying to get this all taken care of as fast as possible because:

1. Its tax season and taxlady needs a car with which to visit clients.
2. The insurance is only paying for our rental car until Monday.
3. We would like to get back to the daily grind of trying to survive.

Anyway, all this means that, once again, I probably won't get around to doing the things I had planned to do today, but at least I agree that my new higher priority activities are actually higher priority.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

So, wait, who profited from this speedy de-registering? And why doesn't anyone mind? I smell scam: someone at the insurance company buys the car as 'rebuilt' and sells it as 'not rebuilt', perhaps?

[swestrup]

Nah, it comes from telling the insurance company that if they have to scrap the car, could they expedite matters so we can get our money quicker, and then> finding out there was an alternative.

In this case chalk it up to an overly efficient insurance company that took us at our word.