Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
I assume you got his insurance info? Report it to your insurance company along with his info. Your insurance company will pay for the repair.
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No, the other persons insurance will be paying for the damages.
Northendzone, do you have collision coverage? If you do, then put in a claim with your insurance company. They will take care of the rest, and whatever costs are incurred, your insurance will collect from the insurance of the person that hit you. If you don't have collision coverage, then your insurance cannot do anything for you, except to put in a demand letter to the other persons insurance. Basically that means that the other persons insurance will be forced to deal with the issue. This only needs to be done if the person that hit you fails to report this to their insurance etc.
As for the value of the car,
take a look here. it will give you a pretty good idea what your car is worth. If the car is written off, you have some options. You can chose to get a cash settlement and your insurance keeps the vehicle. If you do this, you will get somewhere near the book value (but probably less). If you opt to keep the car and also take a cash settlement, generally what the insurance will do is give you 100% of the parts required, and 50% of the labour, up to a certain percentage of what the car is worth
(edit - this does no apply if you chose to get the car repaired at a body shop, it applies if you plan on keeping the car and taking cash, then repairing the car yourself however you like). These numbers vary depending on the insurance company. Your insurance will not fix the car up to 100% of its value, but only up to a fraction of that. Again this number depends on the insurance company you're with. You may have to pay some kind of deductible, it depends on your policy.
You have a choice where to take the car for an estimate, and you don't need more than one. It's your choice. The body shop will negotiate with the insurance company on the repairs. The actual value of the car will be determined by an adjuster that will come to look at your car. You can negotiate to a certain extent with the adjuster, for example I was recently hit from behind, and I got the adjuster to pin the damages to just under the value of the car, otherwise it would have been written off. I was able to do this because I sourced some of the parts myself, mainly bumper parts, which dropped the cost of the repairs.
If a car becomes a write off, then it will have to be re-certified before it can be insured, which will cost about $500, so that is something you want to avoid.