First Class Auto Insurance Replacement Cost

[SanSaiExPat]

My wife just smashed up our new 2008 Yaris. Toyota is telling us it will cost over 450,000 BHT to fix it. This is over 70% of the cost to replace the car. In America the insurance company would: 1. Replace the vehicle at no cost to you. 2. Write you a check for the total cost of the vehicle and take the wrecked vehicle as "salvage". You would then just pay off the finance company if you didn't own it outright and keep the remainder. Does anyone know what they do here in Thailand. Toyota told us the insurance company will onlyh pay us 530,000 BHT towards the purchase of a new Yaris, (Which biq cost over 600,000) and or they will pay the 400,000 + baht to repair it at their discretion. We were also told by several people that Toyota and the Insurance companies are in cahoots and delay the repair of the vehicle or the settlement of the claim for as long as possible. The rationale being that they want you to keep making payments on the wrecked vehicle as long as possible. So far this seems to be the case. Toyota has told us it's going to take 3 months to repair the car. Does anyone have any insight or experience with Auto Accident claims in Thailand? Thanks.

[ThaivisaInsurance]

Very sorry to hear of the accident and we hope your wife is well – must have been a great shock !

The first thing to do is to bring your Insurance Broker into the loop as in case's like this they are invaluable. The Broker will help sort out the claim and keep on top of the repair period for you to make sure you do not have to wait unduly.

As for what to do that is obviously your choice, to accept the offer or have the vehicle repaired – and we have never heard of this rumor(?) of extending the repair just to obtain an extra payment.

[torrenova]

We had a reasonable smash which took a month and that cost was about 90k so I don't know how bad it is if you have a 450k bill !!!! I know this, I would not want the car back and would get as much cash as possible.

If they are paying you 530k then you are out of pocket for sure but unless you raised the insurance from the standard 80% then you are going to be down 20%. So at 530,000/0.8=662,500 so I'm guessing your car cost around 660k.

As you appear to be on finance, then you'll have to sort that out. My experience is that for no accident early settlement, they would immediately discount 50% of the interest outstanding. You'll have to ask the finance people as surely the settlement will go to them, not to you.