Insurance company wrote off wrong car!!!

[scottishsodapop]

Hi

Long story son crashed his car in March this year

we transferred private plate to a fiesta st after crash insurance knew this as 'twas on same policy

we then transferred it to sons new car in September a Toyota gt86

then begining of this month insurance finally payed out

But have used the private plate to write car off and now the gt86 shows as a cat s !!

I need to phone them tomorrow as claims closed now any one think this is a easy sort LOL

[KungFuPanda]

I'm sure it'll be quite easy. I'd presume all you'd need to do is to contact the insurer and advise them what happened. It might be easier if you have the original registration number of the vehicle which should be categorised so they can mark the right one.

[The Rotrex Kid]

Normally if you check the reg it will show a write off but marked to the VRM with the previous car description and not the VIN.

What’s the reg? Happy to take a look then I’ll delete the reg after?

[sixor8]

Well, they had to use the reg the car displayed when the claim was made, I suppose. I'm sure they should assign it to a VIN too and moving the reg has caused issues. I hope it gets sorted, the GT86 may come up in history searches as having been categorized and then removed, so they need to completely remove the data!

Hindsight I realise, and I can understand wanting to remove the reg in case it was scrapped after the claim, because the plate would go with it, but perhaps you should have kept the number on retention until the pay-out was received. There's only one fee nowadays anyway.

[Sebring440]

scottishsodapop said:

I need to phone them tomorrow

There's your answer!

[Earthdweller]

Had similar many years ago with a Fiat Punto we had bought new and had had no damage at all on it in the three years we’d had it

Went to trade it in for another one at the dealer we bought it from and who had looked after it … no problem at all until we got a phone call saying the car was recorded as a Cat B write off and they couldn’t take it as a trade in !

After a few phone calls it transpired that someone had typed the wrong number into the HPI database and the vehicle written off was a motorcycle that was one digit out on our car

Took about a week to get the markers removed

[scottishsodapop]

had actually asked insurance company if could take it off car and they were ok with it

like wise its weird as we always had to give them original plate number when we were dealing with it hopefully its a straight forward mistake and easy to be altered

[scottishsodapop]

The Rotrex Kid said:

Normally if you check the reg it will show a write off but marked to the VRM with the previous car description and not the VIN.

What’s the reg? Happy to take a look then I’ll delete the reg after?

hi I cant message you privately

[cayling1612]

I’m wondering if anyone can help me out here. I bought a car back in September and did an hpi check and it was clear. I was online yesterday looking at something with my car and it flagged up it’s a cat N. Nothing has happened to it during my ownership. I have since done another hpi check and it says it was an insurance write off.

Here is the difficult part it states that it was an insurance write off under a reg in June of 2019 but that reg wasn’t put on this car until May 2023. And I cannot get any other information than that. It is the type of reg that would only be put on my model of car so I’m thinking could it be that the same car was written off but it’s now going against my car. If you do another hpi check it says it it’s not a write off but has a salvage record which really doesn’t help. I can’t keep paying for hpi checks

Who do I contact if I don’t have the insurers information to get to the bottom of this. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I really don’t know where to go with this.

[Jamescrs]

Try your current insurer first and see what they can assist with (if anything), you never know they may be able to help.

Failing that try the Motor Insurance bureau who from their website seem to manage insurance databases for the industry or DVLA

[POIDH]

Insurers can reverse this - my fathers campervan was 'written off' by an attempted theft which damaged a single lock. They did not tell him this, and he only found out when he went to renew. Even the insurance had no idea why someone decided to write it off as it was worth £10k or so...

[cayling1612]

I did try the motor insurance bureau but they said they only deal with insurance companies and not people themselves which was a great help

[Stephen-ra521]

To add another similar situation to the mix, I bought a car privately a year ago. Ran x2 HPI checks (different companies) and all clear. Looked at selling the car recently and now shows as CAT S. Still chasing various avenues, but now know from DVLA that it was written off a couple of years ago (and going back x2 owners to that incident), three months later the insurance company updated the national database to state the write-off on the wrong car, then this year in March updated the database to shift the CatS to another car, then a week after that shifted the Cat S to our car, which the DVLA says is now correctly assigned. HPI companies just saying their records correctly reflected the national database at that time DVLA can't do anything about it. Speaking with citizens advice and they reckon you have to go back through the contracting route to the original cause (all transfers of car ownership including any car garages) and they said we can't pursue it directly with the insurance company who are actually the ones who made this change now that directed affected the value of our car, as we don't have a contract with that insurance company. Tracked down and spoke to the insurer who made all these changes, they said they cant open the case even for they themselves to look... due to data protection?!! They said it could have been the owners fault for declaring CatS against a private plate at the time, tho DVLA and another insurer have told me the CatS is against the car itself (maybe the VIN) and not the reg plate so plates changes shouldn't impact anything. No one can tell us more due to 'data protection'.

Just Insanity.

Be interesting to know if anyone else has faced similar!

[cayling1612]

I have had a response today from the hpi company to say that my specific car as I included my VIN to them has not been written off but the previous plate is or has been on a a car that has been recorded a total loss. They said they cannot remove the marker of the plate as this would remove the insurance category from the actual car that has been written off. All of this makes no sense to me because a write off should be recorded against a car and it’s VIN not a number plate that is or has been on a vehicle!

[Stephen-ra521]

The HPI company would not be the ones to advise what is / is not possible I would suggest. We had very mixed feedback from HPI companies. I suspect they only have a limited view of the databases behind it all but feel the need to gives answers (so may edge towards guessing a bit), and you actually would need somone to review it who sees the full vehicle database AND understands what they are looking at and then what options are available to you. One HPI company we had referred to Experien to advise them (so Experien may have some connection with overseeing the main database), but that HPI company also couldnt get a clear reponse from Experian. I would suggest you submit a complaint to the DVLA to trigger a review and some commentary from their side, and also contact those who manage the national vehicle database, so MIAFTR (Motor Insurer's Bureau) i believe. That way you are more likely to get a clearer picture for yourself of what is going on and what can be done, and can then look at next steps (likely MIAFTR or the insurer who wrote the car off who need to make any database changes).