Insurance offer on totaled car

Insurance will basically pay the equivalent of what's in the marketplace. However you won't have many to compare to on the retail market with 195k miles. They normally would have to match an advertise retail value on the car from a selling dealership, but it'll be hard to find anything selling with that many miles.

For now, they should at least pay you the kelley blue book price. Their offer should not be under that.

You also have the option to buy your vehicle back from the insurance company after it's totaled. You will get a "salvage title" or whatever is equivalent in your state. Then repair what's damaged and continue driving it after passing state inspection.

 

The difficulty in keeping it would also be be finding a shop to fix it. Most shops probably wont even want to touch it. Parts are hard to order, cost is too much. The time the shop would have spent, they can churn out more cars at lower prices, but still nets out more than to fixed a salvaged car. There's no financial incentive for a shop to fix it.

 

if the car still drives well then maybe the damage is cosmetic. Simple replacement using used parts from wrecked cars. This car probably got totaled because of the mileage, making the car's value low.

 

I guess you can frankenstein a repair from pick n pull. But I doubt any body shop would offer that kind of service. I guess you can DIY, but not a route I'd personally do down

 

Try to find an attorney friend or friend of a friend to negotiate with the insurance company.
Buy the totaled car back and sell it. This will be tough because you'll be dealing with yet another set of crooks.
Insurance and car dealing are both scams.
Or you can learn a whole new set of skills. This will be hard too. But potentially rewarding.

 

if you have replacement cost insurance, that's what they should pay you, based on what can be found in the marketplace.
you won't get anything for the tires/maintenance/etc. it's all based on model and trim.

 

air bags deployed @ your mileage and year = automatic total lost

 

Sorry to hear. Having a car totaled sucks. Our 2014 Prius 3 (w/ solar sun roof) was recently totaled at 106K miles, insurance paid us a little over 12K USD for it. Would’ve been probably ~9Kish if we kept the car. FWIW, that was bit more than what KBB/Edmonds said the car was worth (I wasn’t able to put solar sun roof in when estimating the value on those sites though).

 

I actually made out pretty well when insurance totaled my car after someone broke in a week before xmas, took the rear seat and ripped off all the paneling with what looked like they were going for the hybrid battery. Because of that the adjuster said it needed to be replaced and the estimate just for that battery pack was $10k. So it got totaled. Mine only had 80k miles so not near your mileage, but they gave me $21k plus taxes and registration costs. $22500 total. They basically use a service that looks at local listings for your same model car, and adjust for mileage. Mine was adjusted up $500, yours would probably be adjusted down. But used primes are going for high prices so you should get a good offer. After looking at listings I found the offer more than fair and accepted it.

I paid $16k for it used 3 years ago when hybrid prices were low because of low gas prices. So actually made $5k profit. Just bought a 2019 Honda clarity to replace it since it has more range and horsepower, similar to the new prius prime but at much less the cost and more interior space.

 

I always check with kelley blue book