Auto insurance claims for vehicle damage and collision

I see situations occur quite often where people have been keeping their vehicles in excellent mechanical shape and putting off buying a newer vehicle thus investing often more than what their current car , truck or van is worth on paper . When an insurance claim comes into play and the vehicle is in an accident where it is a business decision for the insurance company to write the vehicle off ( usually when repairs rise to 60% of vehicle value ) then the challenge for the car owner begins . Just last month I informed a good client of mine in this situation to gather all of the receipts for the excellent care they have been getting on their van and present them to the claims adjuster . The insurance company tried to give them $ 1900.00 for the van but the receipts boosted the value to over $2500.00 . The lesson in this was to keep receipts so you can prove this when the chips are down . Secondly the insurance company told them that they could not buy back the vehicle from them once it was written off but that turned out not to be the case as they later sold the vehicle back to them for $ 150.00 and we fixed it with a radiator , fans , hood , headlamp and a little elbow grease . The morale of this story is to not be bullied by your insurance company and also keep good repair records . It really worked out for this client of mine with some help from me when dealing with them .