Surely if the A1 was written off due to parts availability they would have categorised it as a Cat N - it would have been worth more for the insurance company at auction too.
Insurance companies are all about making money and not having cars repaired which is a shame, or should we say a scam. Just to justify to up the prices for the insurance my guess. Glad your showing them that the decisions they make are certainly NOT the right ones. Some damages are repairable and some not, or take more time and effort and money to fix, that's why they just write them off. Keep fixing them Dean your doing a great job and exposing the insurance companies that this is not the right way to go....
Completely agree with you,it's crazy,when I was a body shop manager we would always work with the assessors to repair the cars ,things have changed so much,that's why insurance is so expensive,great content.
I agree my daughter had a accident on black ice in her 72 plate hyundai i20n both plastic front and rear bupmers were damaged the coolant radiator, because it was still under warranty it needed hyundai new parts only. We sent pictures to fix motors who were the company we had to use and that was the end of the car written off no visual assesment was made las tI saw of it was on the back of a co part wagon heading to liverpool. this car 16393 miles on the clock. crazy
Hi Dean, loving the content! On this subject, I recently bought a cat N car from Copart, which once delivered took me all of 5 mins to see it should be a cat S. Inner wing, chassis leg and rear quarter. Is there anything you can do when an insurance assessor has clearly lost his glasses? Happy its down as a cat N, but I paid cat N money for a cat S damage wise.....
The S1 is special, the VAG 2.0 TSI + AWD in its smallest formfactor :) The S1 is easiely roadworthy, the Polo GTI is not so lucky... I understand that Certified Insurance repairs cost alot more: Its easy to put a new bumper on the S1 but the insurance also has to factor in a replacement rental car and the many electronic goblins a modern car has. But I think " bolt- ons" should cost less to repair than a car that needs full inner- panel or subframe replacements. Maybe listings should include how high the damage is from the report without the additional costs insurances have to deal with...
Your right it’s unbelievable how they just can’t be bothered too repair these cars anymore it’s just easier I guess for them less paperwork and I see you keeped the green beast and they took the money. Gutted I would have taken it lol still defo good vid makes me want too get a crashed car a repair it myself 👍
No the truth is that Insurers make huge money out of selling the damaged cars, so it's in their interests for you to take a low offer and it be written off
I reckon when a cat s classification is assigned, they should put a number to tell how damaged it is. Like Cat S4 for really bad and Cat S1 for mild damage. And the same for Cat N.
My focus was written off cat S for suspension damage. There was no chassis damage. It was written off again for cat S as the wing was damaged which bent the bracket for the support member. Cost me £20 from ford for a new piece along with 10 spot welds... New wing, new bracket, been using the car since
Be careful on what you wish for. Here in the Netherlands crash damaged vehicles are regulated and as a consequence only certified companies are able to get their hands on them. The result is that there is no copart or other option to get your hands on one, let alone be it at a reasonable price. I envy the UK for having copart and no regulations...
Much the same problem in Australia, cars are written off for no apparent reason with very minor damage. I know of at least one car owner who strongly argued with his insurance co after his car was written off (front bumper only damaged) and they changed their mind and fixed it but it wasn't an easy fight.
Not only classifications, but between different insurers there is a difference, my neighbour reversed into my car, slight damage caused to the front bumper and crack along the front grille, their insurance company wanted to wrote the car off without assessing, went through my insurance company, and the offered to repair the car without any issues.. how can there be a difference between insurers, system is broken
car manufacturers need to made accountable for the lack of parts, the government should introduce a new law suggesting that all car OEMs should have all parts available on the sale of any new car, and still have these available readily from a dealer for up to 10 years thereafter. Insurance companies are getting sucker punched by the lack of available parts hence rising insurance costs, something needs to be done!
Writing a car off because of parts availability is a disgrace. The insurance industry needs a kick in the arse. Writing these cars off for virtually nothing makes everyone’s insurance premiums higher.
You're correct that it's ok to fix a damaged car but the problem is, most of them are bodged back together by the sort of people who frequent Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds!
The people selling categorised cars need to make a point of showing the damage before the repair ( if possible ). Some will describe it, and others won't even mention it, and that can be off-putting for buyers.
last week one of the biggest Finnish insurance company told that it won't insure Audi etron gt etron gt rs or Porsche Taycans anymore. Becouse the battery is so expencive to replace.
Seen a car other day at work same owner from new. It had its front window smashed and then front end parts stolen. Headlights, bonnet and front bumper. Insurance write off cat N… if with that anyone will automatically think oh its been crashed etc etc. definitely agree a couple more cat markers wouldn’t hurt the industry
Couldn't agree more with your sentiments regards write offs. Your assessment seems most sound, that Audi seemingly could have been easily repaired by the insurer without the need for a write off. It definitely seems like an increasing trend for stuff being written off for less and less. Feels very much like there is no appetite for repairing these days. The whole thing needs end-to-end overhaul as, even if you do manage to get a repair agreed, the whole process is a licence to print money which we are ultimately paying for.
You or the new buyer can take it to a DVLA inspection place (AUTOLIGN) and as long as it passes the test ( a very invasive inspection) they will inform HPI and the status will be cleared so will no longer show as a CAT S on any check someone does, regarding the damage to the S1 it may have already been an cat s in the past and it stays with the car cos they didn't have the inspection done better check the date to see when it was marked as a cat s
You can, but it will always flag as a V car, which means you still know it’s been written off in the past. It won’t affect the value positively over being cat s. Also the S1 wasn’t written off before. First time in Nov 23 (just before I bought it)
My Mrs 17 plate Peugeot got recent written off ( category n ) because a parcel delivery van smashed in the back door . I bought it back off the insurance company and I got a door in colour . Totally wrong mate .
That's an s if the inner wing/flitch panel or strut tower has damage, if its for parts then it's not an S and should be reclassified but won't be. No insurer wants to put a category on a vehicle for structural damage if its not as the salvage price goes down say from 22% for an N to 16% for an S.
I know nowt about cars but i do know that my boss drove her car into a hedge and scratched the wing and pulled the trim off. Its now being written off because garage and insurers say they can no longer get parts for her five (?) year old infinity. i thought it sounded mad.
Insurance company’s are making money by writing cars off .Simple as that. They wrote my daughters Nissan duke off and only the exhaust was bent? Something strange is going on.
So this really baffles me. Well done for doing a video on this as I can understand why the Polo is a Cat S as it has structural damage hence the S. But why on earth is the S1 a Cat S also 🤔. It should be a Car N which as we know is non structural but like you said it shouldn't even have a title. Well done though buddy.
in Denmark we don't have any class, we have a % limit on how much a car can be made for compared to how much the car can sell for, no matter how old the car is, I mean 45% and the price must be made with new parts
madness what people put through insurance. in the old days the owners would have just pulled that dent out a bit and put some filler on the bumper, but in the old days people used to fix their own cars. not like now..
Its apparently the accident management companies charging excessive rates for car hire. The insurance industry needs a re form. More money can go to car hire than to the people actually doing the repair. Wages need to increase in bodyshops to bring in new blood. Its a racket, where a load of middle men are getting fat from all the cream. Meanwhile the customers and bodyshop staff get watered-down milk
Totally agree with you, dean, but I'm afraid like everything else that's wrong in this country, nothing will change for the better. As usual dean, keep up the good work 👍
Crazy they wrote off the s1, my megane was hit needes a new bumper and both head lights cost £4800 it thought it was a write off but they fixed it strange part is the hire car cost 15,600 😳 for a month could of brough another rs for that
These car still looks okay. In South Africa code 2 is any used car. So the insurance companies keep the heavy damaged cars code 2 so that they get more for their wrecks on auction. This opens the door for crime cause the foreigners buy these cars at ridiculous prices on auction and then hijack people for their cars .they then swop the vin numbers and papers and the wreck they bought they cut up and sell the spares. The other problem is for the people that repair salvage cars properly ,the dealers and people that buy the cars trace the previous owners and if they pickup a insurance name as owner they assume the car was very badly damaged . I have fought a losing battle for a few years now
My grandads Polo was written off as category S and it literally only needed a new front bumper the bumper was destroyed tbf but🤷🏽♂️. It was a high spec low mileage car and it was worth 3 grand the bumper even brand new was 200 quid no idea why they wrote it off
I thought cat s was structural damage so surely a bit of plastic is not structural. Alot of cars these days are written off via photos and don't even go to assessors it's madness
i've recently got hold of a 2015 V70 D5 from copart for £2.5k (cat n) just needed a new bumper and grills, I'm proper happy as these are over 12k used, parts are a pain to get hold of so im presuming this was the reason for the write off
Had near enough the same issue, bought a corsa and a fiesta from copart, corsa deemed cat s and had less damage than the fiesta which was cat n!🙄 Audi looks to be a good buy, terrible decision to cat s the thing!
Our Government needs to start cracking down on Insurance Companies and tell them they have to start using used parts first to repair cars before having to resort to using new dealer parts, because the Government keeps banging on about we have to start recycling to save our environment but letting Insurance Companies waste by only buying brand new and if brand new isn't available because of back order then just writing cars off for the sake of it, then insurance companies are losing money from what they have paid out on a claim to what they got back for it at auction so everyone's premiums go up to cover their losses.
Parts Availabilty is a big issue at the moment. Keeping the Customer Happy is what its all about. I know someone who liases between Insurance Companies and Repair Workshops. Sometimes a vehicle is written off to provide spare parts for other repairs. Good Used Parts are very useful for Insurance companies these days.
I don't & can't do what you do mate, but damn I like following along with your adventures in buying broken cars, can't believe that the owner of the Audi let the insurance company write it off with so little damage, Rj in Oz
So what increase in insurance does cat S make ? If a standard genuine car cost me £300 to insure for example.... What would the same model but cat s cost ?! Roughly ... Guessing... As an idea
This all started during lockdown and as continued. Assessors working from home during lockdown if you made everything a cat s you couldn’t go wrong even if it was a cat N . Sadly I think this as continued first thing we get asked in the Bodyshop send us some pictures ?????????
I work for an insurance company and see this often. They write the cars off for the smallest amount of damage because it’s more cost effective. Best thing to do is let them write it off and buy it back.
Crazy writing that Audi off Dean - no wonder insurance is so expensive. Bit like that stolen recovered Audi estate you did previously with the cut carpet - I'm sure a lot of owners would prefer to have their cars repaired with good used parts rather than writing them and them losing their car and having to find another. Insurance companies and their assessors need to be having a major rethink, as everyone is paying for this.
At the moment used car prices keep on rising, even diesels are getting harder to find (the nice ones) so it makes ALL the sense to repair a car that is written off / total loss based on repair costs. So you paid 7K GBP for the S1? Bargain, those go for roughly 18-20K EUR in The Netherlands, entry level price!! I would make a lot of photos and details of the repair on that car and print it out and add to the service /manual papers. Because it was no write off, just BS.
It's not so much thinking about how cars are classified - it's what the insurance 'industry' add to the cost of a repair. Thinks like collection and storage 'costs' and rental, on top of the parts and labour to repair. It's become a massive money making scam for all those involved and prices our insurance a vast amount more than it needs to.
Ive assessed thousands of damaged vehicles, and I must say im usually against this "buy to fix" mentality. Often these vehicles are written off for a reason, that GTi being a prime example. But it genuinely looks like a mistake has been made with the S1. Even with a full blown, new parts only repair at a decent shop, that wouldnt have touched a threshold for total loss. it doesnt even need a crash bar... Unless its a previous CAT S ? and the second crash has topped it off
Insurance has always been a complete fraud. If they can make you a ridiculous offer, write the car off, they then own the car, which they sell to a salvage company for a massive profit. I have never accepted that the car is written off and have always got their offers up by about 300%, and then bought the car back as well.
Recently had a baby looking for an S1 for my wife 5 door. She has a 2014 TDI quattro TT and we have a 2011 Audi A1 1.4 S line we will swop for that if interested?
Cars are written off on the phone. There is a quick questionnaire which the claims handlers ask. Age mileage, damage. The person who owned the white Audi might have said there was a scuff on the wheel. This then throws up questions that can’t be answered. Suspension damage, gearbox etc. One of my first jobs was a claims assessor. Going out to cars and either seeing if they have been repaired correctly if the customer isn’t happy after it’s been repaired or assessing if they are repairable. Theses jobs don’t exist anymore. It’s to expensive to send someone out for every accident. Salvage values are high and therefore they can save more money by just writing them off on the phone. That car is a cat s just incase. It’s a joke
Someone greasing his mates palms for the insurance money. Tick a few boxes, say x y and z needs to be replaced. Insurance regulation also doesn't allow any used parts, the consumer should be allowed to decide but plenty of people will scoff and rather take the insurance money than have a car that's been repaired or damaged initially. Despite most cars having some work done in their life which one doesn't know about.
I hate insurance companies, i understand time is money and all. But come on they really are pointless at times. Why on hell would they cat that S1 okay you can't get the genuine parts in time. Then say "sorry to the customer, we just cant afford to hold the car. Would you like the car back"? Like is it really that hard to be more reasonable with these cars. Its a joke behold belief tbh. There definitely needs to re design of this system.
