It works like this: Usaa uses an outfit called CCC to appraise the cars. CCC know nothing about 25yo Mercedes values. They literally google the car and find some similar ones listed for sale, then use these as the basis for their comps.
If the repair approaches the CCC number, or a certain percentage of it, they seem the car a total loss and Copart starts calling you to get you to release the vehicle from your body shop. Of course this is irritating if you feel you are being lowballed. The comps are supposed to be within 90 days. They do not provide details of the cars condition or mileage. They are supposed to be as close to the damaged car geographically as possible. In my case the comps provided were in Minnesota, Atlanta and I forget the third. One of them was actually an e320, if that gives any indication of the knowledge of CCC appraisers or their attention to detail. USAA decides based on this whether to total the car out. If the owner disagrees, the owner can place several useless calls over several weeks to USAA telling them that they disagree, and emailing a bunch of comps that reflect the true value of the car. All of this is likely to be pointless however, as USAA has ballooned from about 500k members 5 years ago to over 12 million today, and they are simply unable to hire and train people fast enough to do the phone jobs. This was a result of the Board deciding to open membership to anyone with an honorable discharge. After about six calls to different people without any type of response, the body shop racks up over 6k in storage fees and you can start to use that as a lever to get someone on the phone who knows how to tackle the situation. The policies say in writing that USAA can get an independent appraiser and you can get an I dependent appraiser and those two people try to get together on a value for the car. If they cannot, it goes to a mutually agreed "umpire", but according to the appraiser I just hired, this happens less than 1% of the time and usually they just agree. Now, if the agreed appraisal value is substantially more than the estimated repair, they may consider repairing it rather than deeming it a total loss. But it would have to be many thousands higher for them to consider that. So I expect them to total the car and raise my insurance rates, except I will probably just drop collision anyway as it is too expensive compared to the value of what I typically drive and I am starting to view it all as a total scam, kind of like health insurance. But I digress. Again. On Tue, Oct 5, 2021, 9:19 AM Jim Cathey <jim.cathey...@gmail.com> wrote: > > USAA is lowballing me, as expected, > > I must say that they did not do this when they evaluated > my Dodge truck. 20yo, and still assessed at $20k. Of course, > as a low-miles unicorn it would be hard to replace even at > that price. > > One assessor I dealt with in the past noted that he was expecting > a shitheap, but that the condition of my car's interior, especially > the carpets, made a big difference. My takeaway was to > wash and detail the damaged vehicle before ever letting > the assessor see it. > > Just like when selling real estate, the observer SHOULD be able > to look past transients, like dirt from the wreck and muddy tracks > on the floor from towing it out, but they don't. > > -- Jim > > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
