I fell into the job of working in auto insurance. Quite literally, I fell and sustained an injury severe enough to require surgery. So while I was recovering from surgery, I knew I needed a desk job since I would not be able to turn a wrench as a mechanic for at least a year or more. After some research, I saw some postings for adjusters and most positions offered on-the-job training.
[Ed note: Ada is a reader, car enthusiast, and auto insurance adjuster. They agreed to write this post on the condition that we do not reveal their employer. – MH]
Once I finished with the interview, I was off on a crash course in Auto Damage Adjusting. It turns out the insurance industry will train anyone, you don’t have to know about cars, or even like them. This surprised me a bit, since I have a bunch of cars here at home, love all things with wheels, and impress absolutely no one when I can tell the tire track in the mud of things like a BFG A/T tire. So here is a car nerd who found himself working in a total loss department, virtually, from home.
It might sound decent at first, but I have a hard time focusing on the job requirements when I feel that so many of these cars could easily be saved. My job is to KILL cars. For example, any older car that gets a light hit that requires a handful of parts and paint labor? It goes to the scrap yard in a hurry. The formula is simple: Get the value for the car, write a damage estimate, add 30% for potential supplementary repairs, get a bid on the salvage selling price and then do the math. If the value is higher than those three combined, it gets repaired.
Keep in mind this is for the listed part price, plus labor, plus paint if necessary. That little distance sensor in your grille that helps with your cruise control? Usually anywhere from $500-2500 for that one sensor. You also have to pay mechanical labor hours to have it calibrated. In short, modern cars have so many complex components that they are very expensive to repair even with what looks like light damage.
What a person like me loses sleep over, now that I’ve been doing it for a short while, is the stories you hear. That’s the other part of the job. You have to call the owner and let them know their car is determined to be a total loss. This is not fun at all. There is no upside to these conversations. Owners can fall into many different categories, but not many people like to go car shopping unexpectedly. The majority of folks do not want to suddenly replace their car. I’ve heard elderly folks candidly admit that the car that I just deemed a total loss was supposed to be the last car they ever owned.
They don’t want a new, fancy car with fussy screens and beeps and bings. They like the one they know and use. I’ve called people who have unfortunately gotten very bad deals at those buy-here-pay-here places. How about owing $22k on a 9-year-old Nissan Sedan that is valued at less than half that? The financing fees and balances owed can cripple people. I’ve totaled people’s dream cars, the $60,000 sports car that the owner then spent thousands on modifying but didn’t add the aftermarket parts to the policy as an endorsement? Not covered, sorry about the loss.
The car gets valued as the VIN decodes. If you add parts, vinyl wrap your car, upgrade suspension or wheels, better add that to the policy or never plan on getting a return on it if it is in an accident. I don’t relish these policies. In fact, I modify my own cars, upgrade loads of stuff, and it’s not on my insurance policy either.
Another thorny issue that is tough for people whose cars get totaled is the high price of new and used cars these days. Even if the value of your 2004 Jetta is low, at least you own it, have no payments and it runs OK most of the time aside from eating bulbs like movie popcorn. The devil you know is sometimes nicer than the huge new car financing you are suddenly forced to contend with because the payout on your old car likely won’t cover you for an exact replacement.
Sure, there may be some high-priced ones selling, and some lower ones, but when these companies plug in the software to “adjust according to mileage and condition” sometimes the values that come back are a bit offensive. Guess who has to let the owners know. Yup, I do. I get to tell people the company is paying $20k for a vehicle that is listed all over the internet for $22k-$23k. Of course, this leads to disputes, and eventually, with limited rental coverage and a need to settle and move on to get a replacement car, guess who ends up with the short stick? The customer.
I’ve reviewed over a thousand cars in a short time and only two of those were deemed “repairable,” which meant that the damage was way too light to meet the value. The rest were deemed a total loss. You might think that being repaired was still preferable. But consider that a vehicle can be in the shop for months waiting on parts that are backordered or in short supply, especially after the pandemic supply chain issues. Some people do not have rental coverage and need a car to get to work, others have limited coverage that runs out.
Does that make me feel better about totaling cars? Nope. I still feel terrible. But the kicker is that the job pays better than what I was making when turning wrenches. So how do you leave? I haven’t found a solution to that question yet. For now, I’ll be the person who takes the extra time to listen, who notices the great condition your car was in when rating it to send to the valuation company and the person who will genuinely care that you have enough rental time to work your way out of the mess that accidentally happened.
Sounds to me like for some people with a car they love but technically isn’t worth much, it may make more sense to just get really good liability coverage and not bother covering their own car.
That way if it gets damaged, they can decide whether they should spend the money fixing it or selling it for parts/scrap.
That’s basically what I’ve done. I have good enough coverage to cover someone else’s car and getting a ride to the hospital, but I just have to hope that if I get in a wreck my car will be worth buying back from insurance and fixing. If not, I’m shopping for another $5000 subcompact earlier than I thought I’d be.
I got into an accident 3 or so years ago and my back end was pretty badly damaged. I fully figured they were going to total it, but they came back saying they would repair it. The problem was whoever reported the damage neglected to take into account any unseen damage. So a quoted 3K repair quickly ballooned into a 5-6K repair which would have totaled the car.
Interesting fact about my state is they are a fair market value state which means the insurance company has to talk to several dealerships within a certain radius to determine what they would sell that vehicle for on their lot. This means taking into consideration year, make, model, mileage, and any factory addons that come back to the VIN. Totaled a Ranger may years ago and expected to get barely anything. I ended up walking away with $900 more than what I owed on the vehicle.
I just went through this. My trusty 2009 Civic EX just had aftermarket upgrades and got totaled by someone using the two-way left turn lane as a passing lane with relatively minor damage. The cost in parts was $1200 and they estimated about $4800 total in parts and labor. Since the cop couldn’t be bothered to review the dash cam footage the other drivers insurance chose to fight it and given the costs of both cars, the insurance wanted to write both cars off.
My frustration was the low balling of the car’s estimate at $9000 when the comps at the time were $12k. Part of the problem was the insurance kept estimating is as a DX (the base model) After months of back and forth we ended up settling, but not after they had to fork over 1000’s in storage and rental fees. Between the lost wages within the insurance company’s employees, the rental and storage fees and the car itself, the insurance paid way more than the comp value of that car and maybe almost 4 times the cost of the repair cost of the car. I don’t know how operating like that makes any financial sense to the insurance company.
Of course to the authors point, I had a paid off car that I wasn’t planning on replacing for at least another 5 years and they added insult to injury by using their own mystery adjusters. I had been accident free for 13 years prior to this so I definitely felt I fed into a ponzi scheme. I’ll be salty about that situation until the day I die.
Seems we’re in a vicious cycle:
I got a poor valuation on a totaled car a few years ago. They wanted to pay me about $5k less than cars of the same age / mileage.
I was eventually able to get that value up, but I had to be a real pain in the ass to do it. I had spare time on my hands and we had a spare car. If I had a full schedule and desperately needed a replacement vehicle I would have been stuck with what they gave me.
I was dealing with my own insurance company, different from the other (100% at-fault) driver’s insurance. I don’t know if this made my position a little better or not.
Gosh, this is such a sad reality. Thank you for providing your insight, “Ada”.
I too work in insurance but on the service side, I often take the complaint calls after you decline a claim, thanks by the way ????. People complain about sedans costing more to insure than body on frame SUV’s. The difference is that any little collision on a unibody will likely hit a crumple zone and therefore totaled. People also are surprised that they do not get a discount for driving “Green Vehicles”, sorry they tend spontaneously combust into flames….
My Audi was totaled after I was rear ended. The insurance let me keep it for the salvage selling price which they simply deducted from the claim payment amount.
I had the same body shop repair it that it was towed to after the accident and after all was said and done I had about $3,000 left over, because they were able to repair instead of replace some parts and I brought parts back from Germany for 75% less than what they cost in the US (we happened to go to Germany a couple of weeks after the accident anyway).
Three weeks later I was rear ended again, but this time the damage was small enough to not be totaled. Because of Michigan laws, the car was never branded as salvage and I only had to deal with my own insurance due to Michigan being a no-fault State. All in all it turned out to be a painless process both times and I came out ahead financially, too.
When I got totaled earlier this year in a 10 month-old car, I could tell that the adjuster didn’t want to do it. I also went out of my way to be nice to him, because I felt like he probably deals with a lot of a-holes.
I suspect any premiums I’d pay on any of my vehicles would add up to insurance value in a year. This is why I don’t insure any of them. Most of their value to me is in being a car I know well, so I know what issues to expect and when. Insurers don’t account for that.
If you don’t insure your cars, what’s your plan for when you have an accident and are at fault?
I’m guessing he means he gets liability-only insurance. So he’s covered for any at-fault damage. But his own car isn’t covered and he’s on the hook for getting it fixed or replacing it without getting a cheque from the insurance.
Yup, Manwich Sandwich nailed it. Collegiate Autodidact, this is how I completely own my completely paid-off cars. Although I believe one alternative usually exists for insured cars in case of total loss: buy it back for whatever the insurer was going to turn around and sell it for. So if the insured value of your car’s $10K, your deductible’s $1K, and the salvage value’s $1K, then you could potentially keep your damaged vehicle and get an $8K payout, depending upon policy stipulations and maybe some other things. ADA, does that seem reasonable?
It seems like basically you don’t own your car even if it’s completely paid off, the insurance company does, gah. Feels like there’s almost no point in owning any older cars, especially in states that don’t allow salvage/rebuilt titles for any cars over ten years old (like my state, ugh.)
What State is this?
That’s stunning, depressing and a morally reprehensible waste (directed at the industry… not Ada).
I’d love to know the industry percentage of “totaled vs repaired.”
On the up side… this makes for a compelling argument to my wife to buy the Vanagon Westfalia I’ve lusted after for years and dropping a Subaru engine in it. More sustainable and while T3 Westys aren’t cheap… probably still cheaper than a new car. And I don’t have to use a damn touch screen to adjust the AC. Of course… not many of them _have_ AC.
Ada said “So here is a car nerd who found himself working in a total loss department, virtually, from home.” which in infer means someone else has already determined the car was likely a total loss.
A buddy of mine has done this. It is delightful. The exhaust is a bit janky so it is raucous but that’s half the fun of his already-janky van. Makes a fine family + doggo hauler.
I put the subaru engine into an old aircooled bug, fun and fast. As for insurnce on something like an old bug or vanagon, stated value collector insurance is a must.
The last unsolicited offer on my 91 Westy was $45k so don’t expect a Westy to be inexpensive unless it is a mess. Also, the Subaru engine is significantly less reliable than the stock water boxer engine, so beware of that too…
Well, as I understand it, you’re under no obligation to talk to the other drivers insurance company. Also, as I understand it, it’s the other driver who owes you, not their insurance company and as such you can go after them directly.
Here’s some good advice:
https://resultsyoudeserve.com/practice-areas/auto-accidents/what-to-do-insurance-company-calls/
Right… because getting lawyers involved makes everything easier. Unfortunately… I’d eat a few thousand dollars loss (from accepting the insurance payout) before I went to a lawyer just to avoid the hassle and general unpleasantness. (No offence to Mercedes’ wife… she sounds like “one of the good ones.”)
Avoid lawyers and get screwed because of ignorance! Victory!
Did I touch a nerve?
Nope!
When my Van was totaled by a red light runner his insurance was low balling me on it. They started getting pissy with me so I said fine – that’s okay – no stress – I’d no longer be dealing with them but rather taking action directly against the other driver. They tried to tell me I couldn’t do that because a claim had been filed. Sorry..nope. They came up with a fair settlement.
I had the opposite experience. I had a 2015 Lexus IS350 F Sport and I was rear-ended by a kid with his learners permit in a Kia Soul at a red light. The rear end was smashed bad, and it had obvious serious frame damage. The kid was on his father’s USAA insurance. It went to their preferred body shop. These MFs wanted to “fix” my car by welding the rear half of another car onto mine. They had already ordered the car and parts to do it. I had to threaten to sue them for them to reevaluate their plans and total it out. The high resale on Lexus saved my butt, as it was totalled for what I had into it.
My parents made money on a totalled 200,000 mile 1996 Ford Escort. My mother had just retired so she didn’t need to drive much. Hit a deer on a country road. Insurance gave her a few grand for the car. It was not worth much. They bought the car back from insurance for about $200, put in junkyard radiator, hood and grille and drove it for the the occasional trips into town for another couple of years.
Back in 2000 I had a beautiful condition Pontiac station wagon. Someone pulling a snowmobile trailer pulled out in front of me and I hit it. All it did was slice through the driver side headlight and crinkle the fender. Didn’t touch the bumper, hood, header panel, etc. Insurance company was gonna total it, but when I insisted I was keeping the car in any case, a district manager looked at it and agreed to fix it this time, but never again. So after it was fixed I dropped collision coverage and never put it on a vehicle again. Why pay for something that I’ll never be able to use? I could have fixed the fender and headlight myself with a few months of collision coverage payments anyway. And now I don’t have to worry about being forced to give up my car by the insurance company, as Michigan laws can do that now if you got collision coverage and they declare it totaled. Just fix the thing myself, if I want. And at least in my experience, body shops will cut you a deal if you’re paying for it yourself.
As far as my near mint 80s Oldsmobile wagon, it’s not one of the models that’s considered collectible (It’s not a 442 or other muscle car) so nobody to my knowledge will insure it properly. So I just be super careful with it.
But it doesn’t necessarily matter how careful YOU are. I got smacked by a guy who had to have blown through 2 stop signs crossing a divided road, in broad daylight. He was 100% at fault and I had zero chance to avoid being hit. We got our van repaired, because we didn’t want another car payment at the time, but the adjuster would have totaled it if we’d wanted.
I keep collision just to be able to deal with a company that may give have a toss about keeping me happy when I am hit by an idiot.
I guess I was lucky, when our Mazda5 was hit by an idiot running a stop sign their company ate the deductible and the payout from the extended warranty was the down payment for the replacement. I didn’t quibble about the car being totaled since everything ahead of the A pillar was shifted an inch to the left.
Insurance: A ruse by any other name would not smell as sweet.
Health insurance is a scam concept, but…doesn’t car insurance as an overall concept make some sense?
A person will have health problems at some point or another. But a car accident is not guaranteed. Maybe statistically, but, fingers crossed, at some point we will see returns on infrastructure and safety investments and see fewer accidents. But the chance will still exist, right? So it’s about risk mitigation.
Then again, I have a degree in accounting. Maybe I’m already broken.
I once had a fender bender with a neighbor. He got a quote of $3000 to fix it. I called my insurance company and asked what it would cost me in surcharges to go through them and they told me it would be at least $3500.
Apparently my insurance premiums only cover the cost for my insurer to deposit my checks.
No offense, since it’s nice to see someone who genuinely cares. I’m sure most adjusters genuinely feel for some people too…
But the whole insurance industry is BS.
I sell tools and I’ve gone into body shops to discuss ADAS calibration systems (and how much of a money grab that is for them) and they’ve gleefully admitted outright fraud to me. I had one tell me “we only had to replace the bumper, it paid 1.2 hours… which was like $380, I told the tech ‘no you’re not getting paid 1.2 hours for this… remove the tail lights, remove the under tray, remove the bumper bar… when we were done we got the repair up the $2978”.
On the other side, a lot of body shop owners set up multiple LLCs in the same building to bill themselves from the LLC so they can have an invoice to bill to the insurance and not argue over price.
Then there’s the “non biased 3rd party valuation companies”.
Non biased should be in quotes. They are far from non-biased.
My wife totaled her car, the third party adjuster CCC Information Systems valued her car… we had paid $17,800 for the car 8 month earlier, added about 5,000 miles to it, and she totaled it. CCC came back and said it was valued at $11,200… blue book on the car was $18,900 at the time, we paid under blue book for it when we bought it.
I requested their comps, they sent a list of comps, I researched them all and found multiple inconsistencies in options they said the comps were equipped with. Some they said were equipped with options they clearly weren’t, others had entirely different drivetrains than they said. Allegedly this information was all “independently verified by CCC in person”. They also deducted $500 for a small scratch and dirty carpets, but being equipped with leather seats only added $23 in value.
When I pointed out how insultingly low the valuation was they said “that’s fair market value, other cars in the area have sold for $9800 and other dealers said they would sell those vehicles for the price listed”.
When it came down to it, I started researching CCC information systems, turns out they’ve settled SEVERAL class action lawsuits alleging they have been purposely undervaluing total loss vehicles for years.
Of course… when you have a “non-biased” 3rd party adjuster who is contracted to work for the insurance company, and paid by the insurance company, their main focus is to save the insurance company as much money as possible. They even advertise how they can save money on claims by “streamlining the process of total loss vehicles”.
I pointed out to the insurance company that CCC had settled multiple class action lawsuits, and was miraculously invited to submit comps of my own… not so shockingly they managed to get the value of the vehicle up to a couple hundred over what we owed on the car still…. Since we didn’t have time to fight it we had to take it, and only lost $4,000 on the vehicle.
CCC is definitely the big doggie in the market, but the other two players are just about as bad
I’ve done the same thing in the past when I’ve had an adjuster give me a low-ball valuation. I would just go on Autotrader, find my own comparable models (same or similar year/mileage/options) and send that to them.
And then I’d tell them “If you can find me one for the price you state, send me the link and I’ll buy it”.
And of course they couldn’t and the comp value would magically rise.
Every time I come to my insurance renewal date, I start thinking if it would better to get the minimum required cover and then not claim for damage? I don’t plan to sell/change the car in question, and wouldn’t want it taken away from me to be scrapped (as it’s not worth what I spent on it)
I’ve been paying for insurance for 40 years. I’ve never had a claim. Ironically, our first potential claim came when my neighbor damaged his car and it was in the shop for the better part of 6 months. His insurance company’s rental coverage ran out so we lent him our car, which he drover for 2 months and then stuffed into a Jersey barrier.
Multiple air bags deployed, entire front suspension destroyed, wheel damage, tire damage, subframe destroyed, body damage, but no unibody damage. I thought that I could claim the car (less $1,000 deductible), but they would raise my rates for accident damage as well as considering me high-risk for letting others drive my cars. They would also total the car for sure. If they managed to repair it, the damage would be on a carfax, which would lower its value by several thousand.
I did the math and determined that I could repair the car myself for $4,000 with some used parts, some new parts, and one aftermarket part (turns out MT Accords use different control arms than their automatic counterparts and they are very difficult to source).
We have racked up 40,000 trouble-free miles on that car since the accident. Would it have been cheaper if we never lent the car out? Call it a $4,000 mistake. But had the insurance company totaled the car and raised our rates to cover our “unsafe” driving, I’d still be paying for this car.
The part that was not covered in this story that irks me is the way insurance companies total cars and then ensure they get labeled with Junk titles. This covers them when 60 Minutes shows up with the family of a flood-repaired vehicle that somehow got resold. But I have eyed-up many cars on insurance auction sites that have a few thousand in damage and yet are sold with Junk titles – never to be on the road again.
Did your neighbor help cover your costs?
If your neighbor damages his own car, don’t lend him yours.
“His insurance company’s rental coverage ran out so we lent him our car, “
I didn’t have to read any further to know that was gonna turn into a ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ situation.
Car insurance isn’t, has never been, about cars. It’s about Risk Management. The only difference in an Insurance Company (Car, Life, any) and the Mafia is that the Insurance Company doesn”t get to actually CAUSE the damage.
#allegedly
If only there was a government office specifically tasked with – among other things – “preventing unfair practices by insurance companies” as well as “monitoring and regulating claims handling”…
Interesting. I recently had to fight Allstate to get my car totaled. I liked the car a lot but it did have issues outside of the accident damage. I had some big issues with the whole process.
They just used pictures of the car for an estimate. This clearly won’t show the full story. I also couldn’t prove that there was subframe damage without taking to a shop, but I couldn’t take it to a shop because they were all booked out MONTHS.
The first shop never even physically looked at my car. They spent over a month sitting on the estimate the insurance company gave me before saying they couldn’t do it.
The second shop was a lot more helpful, even though it was a chain. They offered to physically look at it and verify they could get all of the parts. Then when they took it apart a month later they told me they couldn’t get the parts (wtf).
Due to scheduling, this all took about 6 months, and I had to drive the damaged car for a good chunk of it despite possible subframe damage because it wasn’t possible to get it into a shop.
I called the insurance company and told them that if 2 shops refused to work on it, it is unrepairable. They agreed and ended up totaling it. I got DOUBLE what I originally paid for it so I can’t complain too much.
What was crazy to me was what they were allowed to get away with. For example their rental policy was on a reimbursement basis. I was told that if I felt uncomfortable driving it I could rent a car, but I would only be refunded on a reimbursement basis. I asked what was preventing them from just denying my request for reimbursement and they couldn’t give me an answer.
Overall it was a really frustrating experience and in the future, as long as they are giving me a fair price, I would rather them just total my cars.
Allstate is the worst. They refused to total my car last year while it sat in the shop for 8 months. There weren’t any new airbag control modules in the country, and their rules wouldn’t allow them to install a used one. No one from Allstate would tell me when my delivery dates would slip, no one told me when my claims rep quit, no one who had any authority would even take my calls.
There’s an article out there rating insurance companies by their treatment of customers. Allstate is always the worst.
Basically they refer to their “you’re in good hands” policy as “offer a settlement with one hand, and a boxing glove on the other”…. If the customer fights back then bury them in lawsuits.
I had an experience with Allstate and CCC Information Systems (the 3rd party adjusters)… which was opposite, they couldn’t wait to total the car, and when they did they offered several thousand below a reasonable value. I also pointed out to them that CCC Information Systems settled several class action lawsuits alleging that they purposefully devalued total loss vehicles in the past…. When I pointed that out to Allstate they *miraculously* adjusted the settlement up to what I was asking.
I was ready to put up a big stink about what they offered me but then they actually made a pretty reasonable offer. Perhaps if my car had been in good shape I would have fought them but the engine was questionable and I was planning on putting several grand more into it before the accident occurred.
Sad part was that it was truly fully loaded, I had put a ton of labor into it, I had some absolute steals on low mileage parts on it, and a lot of stuff was working that doesn’t work on most of them. Now it is almost certainly sitting in a yard somewhere.
Sorry to hear that. Did yours happen to be through their commercial insurance?
Yep, my claim rep quit too. It was really hard to get through to somebody useful after that.
IMO if it’s the other driver’s fault and I’m dealing with their insurance I should not be inconvenienced one bit. They should bring a tow truck, drop off a rental car, and either fix the car or give me full replacement cost.
I don’t even want to know what would have happened if I had something as small as a leaky radiator after the accident. There wasn’t a single body shop accepting undriveable cars. Mine was getting close as it was a bit of a project and I stopped fixing issues as they popped up when I suspected it may end up totaled.
I read this article then immediately went to Copart to shop for salvage title trucks
…and that is how you make lemonade out of someone else’s lemon
Yeah salvage title is now a lot less scary if only 2 out of 1,000 were deemed worth fixing.
these are the only cars I buy, I have noticed that it seems that the amount of actual damage on lots lately have been “minor” If I can live with aftermarket parts and was going to modify the vehicle anyway.. its a win win situation for me.
I just had a small accident involving a cyclist and an underage biker that ended up with just a small dent in the bullbar and a broken light. While I have an insurance for damage to third parties, the fact of the matter is that insuring my car for anything else is a suicide. Here in Mexico we are forced to have some sort of insurance policy on our cars, but most prefer to eat up the costs of most non-total colisions since car prices can be higher on some models and repair costs tend to be lower.
The fact that most cars are salvaged in the USA and Canada is quite wasteful given that at the very least those cars could be used again and stop the useless carbon emissions of creating new cars.
But alas, maybe in the future they will say things like “this is why capitalism failed”.