Totaled my car, what do I do with it (if anything)?
2009 ford fusion. Frame is bent out of whack, engine is fucked. Cops had it towed to an impound lot.
The lot wanted the title/deed to the car and $75 to take it.
Do I retrieve it and pay the towing fee to scrap it? Would I even break even?
My dad suggested just not following up with them and letting them do whatever with it, rather than paying them to take it, but he wasn't sure if it was legal.
Would this legal, and would there be repercussions for abandoning it?
>>16903949
Don't pay somebody to take it. It's worth money, even in that state. Generally, most junkyards will pay you a few hundred bucks for it, and some will go pick it up somewhere to get it. I'd recommend calling all the local junkyards and finding out if they want it and if they'll give you anything for it. I know that there's one in my area that will pick up just about anything with four wheels (or less) and give you a couple hundred bucks for it. The lot is ripping you off, especially asking you to pay for them to keep it, as they will make money off it no matter what.
>>16903949
Also, your dad is an idiot. If you abandon the car, the lot can charge you a daily fee for the car being there (if they're not already) and you are legally on the hook for it to a point. I don't know what the limit is, but even if you disappear, they will turn your debt into collectors and it will follow you wherever you go.
That's not even near "totaled". Just sayin.
>>16903968
It's absolutely totaled and you clearly have no idea what "totaled" means. It simply means the cost of repair is close to or more than the value of the car. Insurance companies have a scale and when your estimate gets near it, they'd rather "total" a car than pay for someone to fix it.
I had a Toyota Avalon with similar damage. Insurance company totaled it but I opted to keep the car and sold it for quite a bit on craigslist to a guy that ships totaled cars to the middle east. Apparently Iraqis could give a shit if a car has a front end.
>>16903962
>>16903967
Ok, thanks. There was also rear damage from a previous incident, if that makes any difference.
We're waiting on insurance claims for like $500-1k, (around 4k estimated damage, only had PLPD) and wasn't sure if not claiming it would impede the progress on the claim.
I figured they were bound to do something, but my dad said he looked around a bit online and that there aren't specific laws about what they're allowed to do if someone doesn't claim a vehicle.
I live in Michigan, where insurance is very odd compared to most places.
>>16903980
lol yeah this.
My friend got rear-ended recently. It was pretty minor damage but the collision popped open her airbag. Insurance determined that the cost of getting the airbags replaced was more than the car was worth, and so it was deemed totaled.
@OP:
Get your car out of that lot ASAP. Impoundment fees are no joke.
>>16903990
>We're waiting on insurance
Oh, I assumed you had none.
Call your insurance company. They're the one's who should be handling this.
>>16903967
This.
Theyll sue or forward to collections.
You have to go get it. This shit actually happened to me.
>>16903999
It's cheap ass insurance, bare minimum coverage (no fault). My parents want to avoid going to insurance company so that their rates don't go up.
>>16903999
>>16904008
The insurance claim was for the previous incident, which was a couple months ago (got rear ended at a red light).
This incident was a case of losing control when hitting black ice, hit a pole.
>>16904008
Insurance doesn't matter. What does matter is that that lot is charging you every day for the car being there. Go pay the lot fee, have the car towed to your house, and sell it on craigslist or to a junkyard. Conversely, if you don't want to deal with it, pay them the 75 bucks to keep it. Either way, you can't ignore it. Personally, I'd go through the trouble of getting the car back, cause fuck tow lots and their feeraping of the general public.
>>16904033
Alright thanks for the advice. The thing is leaking oil, but its probably all leaked out already over there. Dad obviously doesn't want oil stains all over the concrete here.
>>16903980
>It's absolutely totaled and you clearly have no idea what "totaled" means. It simply means the cost of repair is close to or more than the value of the car. Insurance companies have a scale and when your estimate gets near it, they'd rather "total" a car than pay for someone to fix it.
It's a little bit more complicated than that. The actual term is "write off", and there are 4 catergories:
>CAT A
>It can be put back on the road, but we won't pay for it.
Insurance repairs are very expensive. When we send you the reciept for your repair job, you'll see the garage has charged us £125 an hour (we do actually pay them that, but to work for us requires paying a registration fee of about £50k a year), whereas a regualr garage might charge £60/hr. Sometimes with new or high value vehicles it's cheaper for us to give you the full replacement cost, have the crashed car (which is now ours) repaired, then have one of our sister companies sell it as an undamaged vegicle for it's full retail price.
>CAT B
>Could be put back on the road, but even we can't get someone to do it for less than the cost of replacement
Self explanatory. We buy the vehicle from you for the cost of a new one, send it to our breakers yard to be stripped of useable parts (to use on repairing other accident damaged cars, sold as brand new parts), then sell the rest as scrap.
>CAT D
>Heavily damaged, some salvageable parts
Cars that have had BIG hits. Anything reuseable gets taken off, the rest is scrapped. We still often make money on these, as a modern car stripped to individual parts and resold is worth about 6 times it's value (the catch is you have to have somewhere to store it all and someone to sell it to) as a driveable vehicle, so you don't need much of it to be intact to break even.
>CAT D
>Fucked. Proper fucked.
We get £70 for the scrap metal, your widow gets a cheque for the value of the car.
>>16903990
>I live in Michigan.
Oh, it shows. It shows.
>>16904175
>>16904116
>undamaged vegicle for it's full retail price.
This is major fraud in the US. A totaled car has the title taken from it by the insurance agency and the loss is registered with the DMV. The owner can chose to keep the title-less car and take a smaller cash payout. You can get a new rebuilt "R" title after it is rebuilt and passes inspection.
>>16904215
While you're marginally right, the process has to be different state by state. I have a truck that was a rebuild because I kept it after the insurance company "totaled" it. I kept the title, did the work myself, went to the DMV to get tags and the insurance company had reported it, so they made me get a "rebuilt" title. The insurance company did not, however, take my title from me at any point.
>>16904175
I can never get around the "secretary of state" shit. Every time my Michigan friends say something about going to the secretary of state, I imagine going to some important person at the state capitol, when it's really just the DMV. I couldn't believe my eyes when I drove by one and it said secretary of state and people were sitting inside looking sad just like they do at the DMV. Why the fancy name, Michigan?
>>16904215
>This is major fraud in the US.
It is in the UK as well - but only if we (the insurance firm) buy it. Legally what should happen is we buy the damaged car, have it repaired then sell it as a write off repair. The trouble is that has a huge impact on it's retail value, as cars like that are problematic to own - for example, we have a blanket policy against insuring write off repairs. What happens instead is that the dealership (one of our sister companies) buys the damaged vehicle from you for the price of an undamaged one, they have one of our accredited workshops (the ones who give us a fifty grand back-hander in return for charging over the odds) repair it, they sell it on to some unsuspecting mug then we pay them an "admin fee" equal to the difference between what they paid for it + cost of repairs and what they sold it for. That way it never gets registered as a write off so we're not actually commiting an offence. Well, not until the driver of the repaired car goes over a small bump in the road and the whole thing falls apart, but I'm not personally responsible for that, so I don't sweat it.
Our car insurance industry is all about pushing the boundries of the law as far as possible without actually crossing the line. The highest paid guys in the company are the ones who go through claims with a fine tooth comb trying to find ways to not pay out. The whole thing is just one big scam really, and the best part is it's a criminal offence to not have motor insurance, so there's no way you can avoid it.
>>16905313
Now they did it with health insurance
Fucking liberals
