Diminished Vehicle Value Lowball, Now What?

None of this is actual legal advice, but I can tell you that I am litigating a diminished value claim right now and my client actually traded her vehicle in after the wreck and repairs so we know what the trade-in value was relative to the Kelly Blue Book value on the date of the trade-in, we have deposed the manager who evaluated her trade-in who confirmed his offer was due to the damage and the CarFax report he saw, and the insurance company still will not come within 50% of our number.

We have alleged bad faith and will be going to trial.

But remember you're a menace to society and responsible for insurance rates going up if you don't just bend over and take it from the insurance company

But in the spirit of being helpful, I think your wife should go try to trade her car in at 3 different places and let them pull the Carfax and make her an offer on her trade-in value. Make sure they write you up an invoice with what they are giving her for the trade-in. I'd then take the average of those three numbers and look at the KBB and NADA values of the car without damage and send that number along with the trade-in and NADA valuations to the insurance company and cite La. R.S. 22:1892(B)(1).

Yeah no doubt. If they met me halfway I wouldn’t be researching this. They just said “this is what you get if you want it, no negotiating”.

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After about a week of them slowly creeping up by $100 I called the gentleman who hit me and told him I was going to take him to small claims court for the difference… $2600. I told him that it was nothing personal but his insurance company was not doing the right thing. I even mailed him a copy of the report. I encouraged him to call his company which he did. About 10 days later I finally settled with the insurance company for $2750.

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As a lawyer, I could not do this, but I do not see why an unrepresented person cannot. They even put the other parties phone number on the accident report. And if you really wanted to educate the other party, you could send them a copy of Kelly v. State Farm LINK where State Farm was found to be liable to their insured for exposing them to an excess judgment. It's a neat little trick where the insured assigns his right to go against his own insurance company to you in exchange for not pursuing the excess against him, and then you get to file suit against the insurance company for their exposing their insured to an excess.

Actually called a lawyer who noped out due to no injuries or other damages. They did suggest calling some company out of New Orleans. Did some more googling and came upon collision safety consultants. Vague name but might give them a shot to get that 3rd party opinion.

I tried getting the option of the used car manager at the dealership. He told me $4,000 was the difference. Insurance company told me that he was lying in case I was trying to trade it in. This wasn’t the case but whatever. Found a diminished value calculator online that estimates my lost value to be $4000-6000.

So I guess the next question is, what constitutes a reputable 3rd party report?

I wish I could remember the name of the company that I used… I know that I found them through Google. If memory serves they pulled the Carfax report for the history and the body shop faxed them the detailed list of repairs to be made with the corresponding cost. I never actually met face-to-face with anyone from the company. I suppose you could do a better business bureau check or search Google for reviews. All I know is once the report was forwarded to the insurance company and I threatened to sue the guy who hit me personally the wheels started turning pretty quickly.

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Anyone have experience with this? Is the best way to deal with them calling a lawyer? I see some online services called Wreck Check for example. Anyone ever use one of those? In Baton Rouge if that matters.

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yea, it sucks and they never give you shite. I was young and just took what they gave me and ended up driving the car till it had 130k miles on it anyway, so it didn't matter.

I used https://www.collisionclaims.com/

I paid for the top report, I had a new vehicle hit by someone and had $14,000 worth of damage done to the front end. I just paid for the report and sent it following their instructions to the insurance agency. The agent called me up and said they agree with the full amount and they would be sending me a check for $7200. They would not pay for the report but I didn't feel like fighting any longer. I'm sure if I pushed I could of had it paid as well.

Tell him he should take his $1200 offer and just be happy they even returned his call

Yeah they took it in my case. If you're buying a 500 dollar report, they probably assume you'd hire an attorney.

The representatives from the insurance company seem to really believe what they’re saying about their position on diminished value. I can’t believe someone would really buy in to what seems like a very disingenuous line of work. What’s more, my friend who sells insurance seems to buy in as well. I know him to be a good guy but man, he defends the way they do business.

Haven’t seen brainwashing that good since the Marine core.