Quote:
Originally Posted by Basket Case
With that much dollar amount of damage, the chane of having odd problems down the road is pretty great. That and having a significantly diminished value...
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But at least with the repair work, if it's done at one of the insurance company's approved facilities (which they usually list off to you when initially making the claim, as they will recommend taking the car there over some other shop of your choice outside of their network), then most companies will warranty the work for the life of the car.
But yeah... unless the additional repairs add up to stupid amounts that pretty much reaches the car's ACV (actual cash value), that ~80% threshold doesn't mean much once the repairs have already started. Ironically, something like that happened with my girlfriend's Corolla in 2012, where a drunk driver smashed into her parked car. Given my background in insurance (and just knowing about cars and what stuff costs and what will likely need to be replaced), in my head, I knew the amount it would cost and that it would be on the favorable side of the threshold. But no, the authorized repair facility said it would be a few thousand less, but I didn't feel like arguing. Sure enough, they needed to make more repairs than they thought (which took longer and used up a few more days of rental car reimbursement) and it ended up being more than what would have declared it totaled in the first place. But we got it fixed, and it actually drives perfectly fine.
However, if it's borderline, some repair facilities might do what they can to get the insurance companies to sign off on it, because they get money off of actually repairing the car, not if they declare it totaled since there won't be any work done. Not saying they're all shady, but it could be an influencing factor in some borderline cases.