Had an accident...What do I do now...?
 

Hello all
I just wondered if anyone had any opinions or advice on something that happened to me today...
Someone sideswiped me whilst I was stationary in traffic at a very busy roundabout. Totally their fault. The front nearside bumper is damaged. I'm awaiting a written estimate, but a verbal one was "around £800". The guy at the bodyshop was of the opinion that that the car would "likely be written off" if it went through insurance.
It's a 2000 2.8 Sport, 106k miles, FSH, well looked after and in excellent pre accident condition. I don't know what an insurer would value it at? I suspect something very low indeed? The car is worth much more to me than to anyone else given the time and money I've spent on it and I'd like to keep it if possible, but obviously would also like it fixed!
My concern is that if I deal with this through the insurer, once that process has been started and if they did indeed decide to write it off and offer me a derisory sum for it, can I stop the process at that point? Or is that a genie that doesn't go back in the bottle?
I doubt the other driver is going to come up with £800 in cash to deal with it. Quite possible they won't even admit liability I imagine. Others must have seen the incident, but in the heat of the moment I didn't get any witnesses unfortunately, so it could turn potentially into a "He said, she said" scenario.
Any thoughts or advice on how to proceed would be gratefully received as I'm not sure what to do now! Thanks :-)

Sorry to hear that.
If its written off you could always agree a price to buy your car back for scrap value. Someone I work with has just done this with an old Ford. They have purchased the 'wreck' and now have their car, plus (superficial) damage, and quite a bit of cash.
It's deffo worth haggling. Good luck.

Thanks. Yes, with a bit more research that's what I'm going to go for. I feel a long hard battle coming on getting anything reasonable out of the insurance company! ;-)

I had a battle with an insurance company recently. After a delivery driver swiped the bumper off mine they looked to write it off. They originally valued mine at £2,500. The repairs to mine were originally quoted at nearly £3k (all original Audi parts) so if you can get repairs for around £800 then you might be ok.

Try getting a couple of quotes ready and also look at how much it would cost to replace your car for a similar one in case they value it too low. Good luck with how it goes.

My last similar battle was a while ago but asking them to find an equivalent car in the same (pre-accident) condition and buy it eventually persuaded them to get it fixed.
Best to go through insurers anyway, if they do agree the other party is at fault there should effectively be no limit on the repairs.

Not in my experience, insurers told me they just use the Glasses guide or CAP black book, then just write it off as uneconomical repair.

As tonup says buy it back off the insurers and ask forum sponsors if they have a bumper or find a decent repair centre have a second hand bumper sprayed and bolt it on the car yourself.

I think an appeal to the Ombudsman would help in those circumstances? I believe they have to pay the amount required to put you in a car that is an equivalent, it shouldn't be hard to show what a good one of these goes for these days?