[Mgs] Fwd: Have a lovely and safe weekend, everyone.

[Richard Gosling]

Not sure how much your car (or indeed an Australian Dollar) is worth,
but in the UK if the damage approaches even about 70% of the car's
value the insurance company will write it off rather than repair it.
Of course, you then get into a protracted battle over exactly how much
the car is worth - BTDT, even on a car I was only claiming was worth
#400.

Is your insurer a specialist classic insurer, or standard insurance?
Actually, now they've accepted the quote, it probably doesn't make
much difference.  You'll have to negotiate the quality of the repair
with the garage doing the work - it's definitely worth discussing with
them, you've nothing to lose by trying.  Have they started the work
yet?  If not, and they are not planning to do the work to a standard
you are happy with, you could try telling the insurance company that
you are not happy with them and want to get a quote from elsewhere,
but I doubt you'd get away with asking your insurance company to
accept a higher quote from the same garage.

Is it a place you are already friendly with?  When I damaged my
Spitfire (my fault) I took it to a Triumph specialists I already knew
well, and they knew me.  They cared more about me as a customer than
they cared about the insurance company, and were happy to do me some
favours, including bumping up their quote by the amount of my excess
so that I ended up not out of pocket at all!

Richard & Sammy ('73 Black Tulip BGT, in daily use at the moment while
I fix my daily driver Subaru).