You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Now with 3x more gears...

[indes]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

Yes. Basically forced to take offer.

She said they got the proposed payout number quickly and spent 2-3 months with someone close to them who is a lawyer by trade, to negotiate/dispute the number with different supporting documentation/reasoning etc. They said they made more than half a dozen attempts at "negotiations". ICBC would say a ton of meaningless stuff to pretend they weren't stonewalling, but didn't budge once from that number.

I believe she said their last attempts were to simply ask ICBC if they'd bump up the payout by $1,000 and then $500. ICBC still said no and stuck with the original number.

EDIT: I think she said that because we had AB plates/insurance, if I got into a collision there, they'd probably pay us full value without much argument. But because she's a BC resident, she believed that ICBC was more likely to roll over on them if any claims were made. We were ranting about our insurance woes and in the end, I basically ceded that she won (lost?) by a significant margin.

I mean it makes a bit of sense. ICBC basically represents both sides in BC in almost all cases for vehicle insurance claims there. It's kind of a conflict of interest. By just declaring no fault and doing partial payouts, they save money administratively and lower payouts. This protects them from overly massive payouts which some private insurance companies complain about at times.

That's a ####ty deal. I had ICBC for 12 years and never had an issue. I had one major accident with substantial damage to my truck - they paid for the tow, the work to fix it, rental car all without any participation from my end.
I mean even if ICBC paid out 10k less per vehicle you would break even in 5 years with our absurd insurance rates. That is the real insanity.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Odd a couple of key strokes googling found this

https://www.icbc.com/claims/disputes...ation-disputes

I don't blame your friend, maybe her lawyer friend, but there are dispute processes, do they work fcuk knows.

Yeah, I don't know why ICBC wouldn't budge. A family member is a lawyer, so they ran it through him to ask if they were doing anything wrong, which he didn't feel like they were. Stonewalling even a $500 increase in payout is just strange and bizarre.

Originally Posted by opendoor

That's not really how it works. There's nothing inherent about no-fault insurance that leads to lower vehicle valuations. And in fact, in my one experience with ICBC writing off a car, they actually paid higher than what I thought the market value was.

Injury payouts are much lower than before, and in extreme cases with life-altering injuries, that can be a pretty terrible situation. But the system before was kind of ridiculous. My wife and I got rear ended years ago; it was a pretty low speed collision without a ton of damage, but we did have minor neck/back injuries that needed physio to resolve. But because ICBC was paranoid about us dragging it out and getting a lawyer, they just started throwing offers at us and we eventually settled for about $40K combined for what were ultimately relatively minor injuries. I wasn't about to turn down the money, but that's a pretty ridiculous system.

Yes, that was a bit of lazy speculation on my behalf. My bad.

How far back was your experience? My friend went through this last year. I think she did say that she knew that further back, the payout negotiation and experience wasn't as arduous as their recent experience. They did wonder if it was a more recent thing that ICBC was doing and changing or if maybe because their other vehicles are considered higher risk, maybe that affected the payout... although theoretically the other vehicles shouldn't affect it, so the former makes more sense.

Now that you mentioned it, I think she said that ICBC didn't fight on injuries/rehab, but she barely needed to use it/she'd need to prove she used it to get the reimbursement (which she didn't need).

Originally Posted by indes

That's a ####ty deal. I had ICBC for 12 years and never had an issue. I had one major accident with substantial damage to my truck - they paid for the tow, the work to fix it, rental car all without any participation from my end.
I mean even if ICBC paid out 10k less per vehicle you would break even in 5 years with our absurd insurance rates. That is the real insanity.

If you don't mind me asking, how long ago was this? My friend's situation was last year and they were thinking it was a more recent change in the last few years. Prior to my friend's experience, I and my friend had never heard of anything ICBC related that was much worse than what we deal with here in Alberta.

The vehicle could be driven away so no tow/rental needed. I think prior to the payout offer, they even sorta believed there was a long shot chance that because the police allowed her to drive home, the extensive damage to the car was possibly repairable. IIRC, she said initial offer was payout only and they had to ask for the estimate if they got a payout less salvage. Salvage number was also bizarre once ICBC finally gave it. Something like payout reduced down to $1500 if they kept the car and for sure $1500 wasn't repairing the vehicle to a drivable state.