Expert: Richard Hixenbaugh - 10/22/2010

Question
I bought my car in October 2009, it got into a crash in August 2010. I have State Farm Insurance, it was sent to the body shop and initially the price of repair was <80% but >70% of the estimated value. Nonetheless it wasn't determined to be a total loss and they went ahead with the repairs.
3 additional check were then issued raising the cost of repairs > 85%.

My questions are:
Should they have waited for all the costs to be evaluated before declaring it not to be a total loss? or is done by the first impressions and the cost added as the car is repaired doesn't matter? My claims agent did tell me that by the time they realized that it should be a total loss, 2/3rd's of the work had been done.

I don't know if I should do anything about it.  Because when I started asking questions, I sensed her getting really uncomfortable and then she went on to tell me that actually for me the mark for total repair was 85% and not 80%, which I think was BS.

Please help : as whether I should fight it or not. Whether they did the right thing or not.

Thanks!!

Answer
Hi Shanks,

The decision to repair a vehicle or declare it a total loss is completely up to the insurance company. Although it is the inductry standard to total a vehicle when the repair cost is more than 70% to 80%, the law allows the vehicle to be repaored up to 100% of the value. In some cases I have seen a vehicle repaired to 125% of it's value.

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it.

I hope this helps
Richard Hixenbaugh