Sounds like you are on the mend, sorry to hear about the car but at least you are OK. Must have been a pretty bad smash to be cat B. I don't think a lot of gritting has been going on this way either. This morning I managed to spin my awesomely questionable RAV4 at embarassingly low speed on an island. That thing has 4 winter tyres fitted and has been absolutely beasting snow covered hills and lanes etc for the past few days now so I was quite surprised to say the least. Ice is a bitch. Winter tyres do fuck all on glassy morning ice either really. At least with that thing it didn't get beached so I got work on time. The last time I had a smash was in my daily, 100% my fault but thankfully no damage to other vehicles or injuries to any party. I had phoned the insurance company out of panic as I thought that was what I was supposed to do. A few of my friends pointed out that the insurance didn't need to be notified necessarily as no other vehicles were involved. My situation was considerably simpler, with no emergency vehicles attending the scene and no damage to scenery though. In the end I withdrew my claim and fixed the car myself (new bonnet, front valence and headlight cluster sorted it) but it still ended up bumping up my renewal quote as for some reason it still gets recorded regardless as soon as it's reported so I shot myself in the foot there.
He doesn't have the car, and since it's a cat b he won't be allowed to retrieve it / remove items from it
what a load of shit, you can buy cat B cars all day long, you just cant put them back on the road they are sold for parts only. its cat A cars that go straight in the squasher. as those are the ones that are total burn outs or have been in fatal accidents etc... - - - Updated - - - what a load of shit, you can buy cat B cars all day long, you just cant put them back on the road they are sold for parts only. its cat A cars that go straight in the squasher. as those are the ones that are total burn outs or have been in fatal accidents etc...
It's at the insurers discretion if they let you buy it back, as once the car is a write off (regardless of catagory) it's property of the insurance company not the policy holder. So technically even if the car was a cat c depending on the company they could refuse to let you buy it back
what ive learned so far Insurance company are now recovering the car from the yard to their yard. They have already said on the phone it is a write off without even seeing it just from my description, and i can say 1000 percent its going to be a cat b as its proper fucked. Ill stick pics up tmoro but the rear end is banana shaped and the drivers front quarter is in about a foot. They said to buy back cat b you need a breakers license. and then yes it could be put back on the road technicaly however that would never happen as just would not be worth the effort. However i do want it back for scrap just to rip the drivetrain out so might try and find someone with such license and get them to bid for me i cant imagine it would be worth much to anyone else as it just looks like a lump of scrap metal
not sure who james cass is but does he have a breakers/salvage license? im guessing so. As previously said, you cant buy back a cat b unless you have a license. Guessing this is to stop lunatics trying to put cars back on the road that are "proper fucked"
You can buy back cat b, I have a car sitting here at my unit which is a cat b all they ask for is confirmation letter from the scrap yard to verify. I don't have a breakers yard or anything I am just a garage. On the other hand one of my other customers wasn't allowed to buy back his cat d but I don't think he wanted it back anyway, just say it has sentimental value blah blah and you'll give them notice of destruction in due course at first they didn't want to give it back as well.
interesting. Rang them up today to chase it all up. Its still sat in the recovery yard collecting storage fees. They said copart would then come and take it away, value it, then decide what to do with it. So thought about it and have said fuuuucck that, Im going to recover it myself from the storage yard today to my yard. That way they can send someone out to value it at my place and decide what to do with it. Reading up on it, chances are they will just come and look at it, write it off and say keep it. But figured if they take it away now, the chances of me getting any of it back down the line just get smaller and smaller. And if they decide to fuck me over theres nothing i can do. Least with it at mine i can keep the running gear and make some £££ back if needs be.
To buy a Cat B you need to be registered with the environment agency for an environmental permit, be a registered ATF site, be able to issue a certificate of destruction and be a registered waste carrier. It cost rather a lot to get all this and its totally pointless unless its your business, they are bastards too my dad has loads of problems with the environment agency and once you have the licences you pretty much have to constantly jump through hoops for them to the point that after 40 years my dad has got rid of his whole business and is going in to buying and selling plant at auction The fact is if you get paid out properly for all your car had and get its true value i'd just not worry about the old car, it would take a huge chunk of what your offered to buy it back and then you have to go through all the effort to break up the old car to make that cash up, yes you may make a small profit but it will require way more effort, something you don't need if you have just been fucked up in a crash.
What F51 posted isn't correct, I have a cat B here and I don't have a permit etc for breaking,dismantling etc or whatever. I don't beleive there is even a law about it? ask the insurance to show the legislation that requires them to do so. Never let the insurance take the car if you intend to keep it fyi. Also someone may not even come out they might just ask for pictures.
Seriously? How exactly are the council supposed to ensure that every square foot of road is totally ice free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? And with the greatest of respect to my good friend JFK, he wasnt the only one to go over that bit of road that morning, but he was the only one to total his car ......... As far as the insurance Q goes, if there is no-one else involved you dont have to report the incident and can do what you want with the car but obviously would have to pay for recovery yourself. However, if youve hit road furniture then you need to at least make insurance aware as fixing that shit isnt cheap and you could finish up proper bumholed. If I was you, assuming you got the car pretty cheap and can ge 50% value back out of breaking it Id have just got the car back and inform the insurance what happened but tell them you dont want to go anywhere with the claim at this stage. Also be aware that if you are going through insurance they can charge whatever they like for buyback, I got hit with 20% after being promised 10%.
100 percent wrong, even if no one else is involved you MUST report it to the police within 24 hours. Or they can do you for it. I know this as it happened to me 2 years ago, went off the road, no one was involved and no damage to any property. However some good Samaritan see me and informed the cops, I was done for not reporting an accident within 24 hours and got a 350 quid fine and 6 points.
by law its 100% correct its stated many places, my dad has been dealing in insurance damaged cars for over 40 years! people get round it many ways but lawfully you need the correct licences as it is declared as waste because it is no longer a car, also really and truly by law you now have to store the car with all fluids drained tyres in a designated waste area and batteries in a separate area in an appropriate container. laws have changed massively around scrap cars and a cat be is designated as a scrap car because the shell must be crushed and a certificate of destruction offered, if you care to prove me wrong the provide evidence to the contrary.
You've gotta be careful whatever you do, as you could end up screwing yourself over even more. Honestly just let it go and concentrate more on getting a decent valuation
Don't see the difference between a damaged car and a perfectly good car that has been broken for spares, to scrap the shell, it still has to go to a registered end of vehicle life place... You give them the documents with the shell and they send them to DVLA to register it as scrapped etc.. The shell is what the cat B is about, not the running gear etc..
Its funny how much this thread shows how much confusion there is with insurance! Anyhow, got the car out of the recovery yard and back to my yard. That act alone makes no difference to the claim proccess, it just saves me payng £30 a day storage fees whilst they piss around waiting to come and look at it. From there they will send someone to me on monday to have a look at the car and value it. The reason ive done it is i dont want them to take it away, then say its only worth a few hundred quid. Ive said they can come and value it first. I also said id like to buy it back. Reading up its most likely theyll come and look at it, decide its fucked and not want anything to do with it as it will cost them to move it on and dispose of it. So hopefully they will let me keep it for scrap value. Where as if id let them have it straight away id of never got it back. Im not being greedy on this, all i want is enough back to buy another altezza in the same condition. So this is a precaution, if they end up paying me a pathetic amount (which knowing insurance companies they probably will) I can then just buy a cheap is200 and drop the running gear in. or a ae86 ; )
