some questions about ICBC after an accident
 

dont worry people of the internet! my car is fine :D

a friend of mine get rear ended this weekend and hes concerned with how ICBC will evaluate his car, its an older civic so he obviously has concern of the car being written off easily but more concern on his payout.

he has receipts for the work done including engine work and other stuff to keep it in mint shape.

lets say ICBC low balls him on their offer if it is written off.. how would he go about disputing it, or getting more out of his claim. hes not trying to rip anyone off or milk the system by any means he just wants to get back into another mint little civic without taking a huge loss..

anyone wanna fill me in on how they go about doing this and what to watch for?


thanks in advance! <3

Almost anything to do with maintinence icbc doesn't give a fuck unless you did it the day before you were rear ended. It is always a good thing to tell them you had receipts for everything. Especially if your recent work is double what they offer him for the entire car.

Worst come to worst, take the pittence they offer him, and buy the car back from icbc for pennies. That way you can strip it down and part it out to regain what value back you can
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You do realize that you can negotiate with them when they give you an offer for total loss, right? it's like trading in a car. They low ball you, you throw back a high price, then meet somewhere in the middle.

^ this is what im curious about, how to go about doing that and what is the best way ?

if your buddy's car has extra mods then IIRC there is something in the insurance policy where you pay some premium to cover the additional equip such as fancy speaker...etc

it was 3-4 years ago when i heard about that additional premium

when you buy insurance for a 1995 Civic, or whatever year it may be, you pay premium based on a stock 1995 Civic. ICBC doesn't care if you've got $100k under the hood, if you paid insurance premium based on a $2,500 car, you'll get $2,500 when the car is written off.

ICBC will tell your buddy to put the car back to stock and pay him for a stock Civic. If some of his aftermarket parts were damaged, he can include those costs in his tort claim against the other driver.

As far as maintenance receipts, those don't matter. All cars need to be maintained, so showing ICBC that you maintained your car will not get you anymore money. It's not like they are a potential new owner buying the car from you. They are paying you the actual cash value of the car, based on other comparable vehicles which are in the market at the time of the accident.

You should negotiate higher...

I dunno where ICBC gets their numbers from... My first MR2 was rear ended... write off, their initial offer was $3k but I talked them up to $16k because that was how much it would cost to replace the car with an identical one at the time.

6 years later, my second MR2 got rear ended, same amount of damage but they wouldn't write it off because they claimed it was worth $15k. It was the same model, same year as the first one but it was 6 years older, US car and had double the mileage. Also at the time, you can buy an MR2 for $8k.

Their logic escapes me, maybe someone who works as an estimator can explain.

you can settle higher then buy the car back, use the money to fix it your self but then it has to be inspected and if you fail they won't let you drive it.

I'm not sure but i don't think they'll take the car if you strip the aftermarket parts out unless you return them to stock. what i mean is i don't think you can be paid out if you take out the exhaust system, wheels, engine parts and so on, and just hand in the shell.

as mentioned above I believe you must settle then buy back the whole car, then strip it and scrap it using what money icbc gave you to buy a new car which you can then put the parts back into, if they fit.

Not entirely true.

After my car burned down and ICBC declared it a write off, they asked for any maintenance records I had and was promptly handed an inch thick folder of work I had done over the past year of owning it. True, many of the items on there they didn't care about (such as doing things like swapping out spark plugs or changing the oil), but some of the bigger ticket items, especially the ones that were relatively recent, all played a factor in my final payout. In my case, I had installed brand new tires literally the day before the car burned down, and I was given full price for 'em. They also gave me pro-rated pricing for other things like an almost-new clutch, the engine rebuild I had done a month or so prior, and a few other odds and ends. Let's just say that the final payout was far higher than I had ever expected. :lol

YMMV.

ICBC will probably go by the KBB value first, so you respond by finding models anywhere you can look and use those as examples of what you feel you should get. Assuming the examples that are used are similar in year, mileage and condition, you should expect to get at least close to that amount. The intent is to get fair market value for your car, not what a scrap yard will pay you for it.

ICBC does not use KBB. They use a third-party company which compares your vehicle to cars that are currently on the market and come up with an average price. 3 out of the 4 cars of mine that were written off, ICBC paid me more for the car than I could have sold it for.

I don't know how the taxes work now that HST is gone... Before HST they would give you GST and a voucher for PST that you could use if you bought the car from a dealer. Then during HST, they just added HST to the settlement amount, which was great. Now, I don't know what they do, perhaps they still add 12% to the settlement amount since everyone has to pay 12% when they buy a car now.