WHELP… our stolen car saga is mostly over. Now all that’s left is getting a new vehicle.
Our car was found 11 days after it was stolen. The whole car was trashed, inside and out. It looks like they played bumper cars with our car and I feel badly for all the cars they must have hit!
Last week we received a toll violation from FasTrack because we didn’t pay the toll. We had already called and told FasTrack our car was stolen and deactivated the account for the car, but the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing so we had to go through it all again. We are hoping this time will be the last to deal with FasTrack.
Initially, our car was towed to a body shop to get an estimate for the repairs. The lovely owner of the body shop intimated to us that we should probably start looking for new vehicles. Two days later we were informed that our car was not worth being repaired (which we were glad about, we didn’t really want it back at this point) and that our car was officially going to be totaled. At this point, my husband started trying to figure out the price of similar vehicles so we would have an estimate of what we would get for the car and so that we would know if we were being given a fair payout or not.
Our car was 9 years old with 150,000 miles but still in good working order. There were no mechanical issues and only a few minor cosmetic issues with the car. After doing research, the closest we could find was the same model with only 130,000 miles for $8000. That was the lowest amount we decided we would be happy with.
Fast forward a week or ten days and we were finally given an offer by our insurance… $10,500 plus tax, license, and registration fees of another $1200. They offered us $11,700. We were very happy with that price. 9 years ago we paid $21000 plus tax, license, and registration for the car so we felt this was a good amount. After our deductible, we received $11,200 plus an additional $250 (which they said was the maximum) for personal items. We also pay our insurance yearly so will get $400 back for the “unused portion of the year”.
Additionally, we are filing a case with Hyundai personally. Due to the high theft rates of their vehicles, we are eligible for money for personal items lost (of which there were many and way more than the $250 from insurance) and up tp $375 for our deductible. Hopefully we will get even a little more to put down on our next car.
We are planning to put down (at least) $15,000 on whatever car we do buy and then planning to pay it off early by making extra principal payments.
Once we hear back from Hyundai and get a new vehicle, then our stolen car saga will finally be over! We are 80% of the way done with this drama and I’m ready for it to be over.
March 27th, 2024 at 09:05 pm 1711573523
March 28th, 2024 at 03:25 am 1711596357
March 28th, 2024 at 05:15 pm 1711646136
March 30th, 2024 at 03:14 pm 1711811658
April 2nd, 2024 at 02:48 pm 1712069303
Insurance is supposed to pay replacement value. We did research on the price of replacing out car (from a dealership). We found similar models with the same extras and (close to the same) mileage and determined the minimum we should receive. Our insurance came in with a great price so we didn't have to negotiate, but we did our research in case it was an issue.