William D. Robison Personal Injury Law Blog on Lawyers.com

When I first published on this topic I noted two recent cases in Vancouver Washington and Portland Oregon involving remarkably similar misrepresentations made to car crash victims who suffered total loss of their vehicle. Both cases indicated practices designed to bring down loss of use payments and reduce compensation for rental car coverage and total loss vehicles unfairly. Two more cases have come to my attention in the past two months. This leads me to believe many car crash victims may be getting less than they are legally entitled to.

RENTAL CARS

Accident victims are entitled to compensation for all losses caused by the auto accident. This includes "loss of use" of your car. This is measured by the value of the use of your vehicle, not something less. You can't up grade to a luxury model unless you pay the value difference but the auto insurance company cannot force you to downgrade either. You are entitled to fair compensation for what you actually lose.

In each of these recent cases the insurance company's insured negligently caused the total loss of the accident victim's vehicle. In each case the auto accident victim was told that the auto insurer was responsible only for rental of a $25 per day sub-compact rather than the full sized vehicle that was destroyed. The car crash victim was told they had to pay to "upgrade" to the car they were entitled to! This is not true. If you encounter this type of tactic call an experienced Vancovuer Washington personal injury and car crash attorney.

Total Loss Valuation

As personal injury attorneys we see a lot of tactics designed to minimize the amount a person injured in a car crash recovers. One tactic is using dealer pricing of trade in vehicles. The most common however are computerized valuations. These valuations do not actually value your car. They value a theoretical "average" car based on numerous vehicles that are allegedly for sale or have allegedly sold for specific prices.

In such a total loss valuation performed by the insurance company for the negligent driver I found the same significant "errors" had been used to downgrade the amount paid for the injured driver's car. Comparison vehicles were misidentified as to year and options. Options the loss vehicle had were ignored. Further scrutiny of the valuation showed more serious deficiencies.

We requested copies of everything the negligent driver's insurance company used to value the damaged vehicles. I then began making calls to the automobile dealers listed to make sure the comparison vehicles really are comparable. What I found made me question the entire total loss valuation process.

Hint: Demand the valuation documents, all of them.

The most obvious question raised was "Why do you need to "compare" 15 vehicles when you have 3 or 4 that are almost EXACTLY the same as the loss vehicle?" The reason is obvious. Using a lot of "comparables" drags the average value down. This is particularly true because the computer program "devalues" older cars in comparison to newer ones. By picking several cars a year newer the program reduces the cost of the total loss vehicle even if it is a better car with fewer miles and more options.

Hint: Do your own research into the value of your car, two very similar cars are a better measure of value than 15 mismatches.

Telephone calls to the dealers who had allegedly quoted "take prices" produced interesting results. In one case the person quoted had no authority to set a price, he could only convey offers. In the second case I learned that the vehicle had already been sold for more than the alleged "take price".

Hint: Research the autos used to produce the valuation. 

We also review the camparison cars and look for "outliers". These are cars that sold for way below what similar cars sold for. To drag the price down these "fire sale" cars are left in the appraisal. I recently called the listed seller on one of these vehicles and discovered the sale was a desperation sale as his father was dying of cancer, could not use the car and badly needed some money. That is anything but the type of bona fide sales transaction that is supposed to be used. The definition is: " an arms length transaction between a willing buyer who does not have to buy and a willing seller who does not have to sell." Outliers have no business in the valuation process.

Valuation methods like "CCC" and "Autosource" rely on a valuation method that does not actually appraise your car. It appraises a mythical vehicle. If they really wanted to value your vehicle they would find two or three very similar vehicles, they would not search high and low for as many vehicles of the approximate year, make and model as they can, toss out those they think sold for too much and then run an average.