To start with nothing has happened no wreck or anything but.... I have a 95 pickup if I got hit buy another driver and they were in the wrong with only damage to the body of the truck. Engine is fine and the frame is great. The problem is the damage is more then the blue book value. Lets just say the blue book value is $2000 and the damage is $5000. Would the truck be considered totaled or would they have to fix it to the condition it was in?
This sounds very much like an insurance scam tbh, but they would cash you out on the vehicle if that were the case. Insurance is not going to waste money on fixing a jalopy even though that jalopy is not a jalopy in your eyes. It would be considered totaled and sent to an auto salvage auction.
"Blue Book Value?" What does Zillow say? btw: codell is the resident expert on this. Wait for him to chime in on this.
Many years ago actually had a situation like this. I'd bought about a ten year old Mazda for like $500 from a family friend and a year later some truck rear ended me and smashed in the back of my car pretty bad. The owner of the truck sent me to his insurance guy and after about a half hour of him evaluating the car he wrote me a check for $2,500 to get it fixed. I couldn't believe it. It was the best wreck I've ever had!
I am not sure what you are getting at if you understand the concept of it being totaled. Once the vehicle reaches the totaled threshold, they are essentially buying your vehicle and paying you for whatever standard they use to value the vehicle. At that point, you have a choice to buy back the vehicle or it goes off to salvage. To answer your question, they are not going to write you a check for more than the value of your vehicle.
Not trying to scam anyone just curious what happens if someone were to hit me and the damage is more than the value. If I had the option to get it fixed?
The insurance has to give you what they believe the "replacement value" of your car is which takes into account many factors including the average price of what your make/model/mileage is selling for in your area. I had a 13 year old car that was completely destroyed by a drunk driver. I looked up the most optimistic KBB value of it and that was about 3.2k, then I looked up how much my car was selling for in Houston and saw it was ranging from 4.5k to even close to 6.5k. His insurance called a few weeks later saying it was totaled and cut me a check close to 5.5. Now KBB isn't the standard concrete value for cars but if his insurance had given me that 3.2k and I tried to buy my exact same car, mileage and everything, then I would be taking a deficit for an mess their insured caused.
