[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Overdrive

Same thing happened to me with my old car. Got rear ended at a light, completely plowed. From the outside everything looked pretty OK aside from the bumper cover being scuffed and having pieces of his headlight glass stuck in it. The only slight indicator was that my trunk lid no longer sat perfectly flush. The trunk lid popped open when I opened it later, like it was barely hanging onto the latch, and my trunk mat was floating in space being supported by my spare tire. The spare tire well had gotten punched in by the hit, and there's no way you'd know that from the outside. The adjuster thought the same way, as I just happened to bump into him when I went to the salvage yard it was brought to to get my plates back. He said "it really doesn't seem that bad. Not much damage". Popped open the trunk and lifted the mat for him to see, and got a "Oh...Well, that changes things. Yeah, we're probably going to total it." That cursory outside look definitely doesn't tell all just because the car doesn't have pieces hanging off it.

It gets harder and harder to guess from a quick look what damage will be a write off as the cars depreciate as well. As the cars go down in value the prices of the repairs do not. Many that were repaired 2 years ago would now be written off for the exact same damage since the costs are closer to the value of the car.