How much for diminished value?

My advice is to talk to an expert--the dealer. If you are replacing the plastic bumper cover and touching up a panel it doesn't sound like you have any damage that is going to diminish the vehicle's value. How much value do you believe your 1st door ding or paint chip is going to knock off?

 

I agree that an accident damaged car is worth less, but that would apply to cars that have had significant damage. In this case the damage was minimal - similar to what you could have done backing into something in a parking lot at 5mph. It does not hurt to ask, but I can not imagine you getting much.

 

Your car's diminished value will easily be four figures. State Farm should be able to quantify this value just about to the penny, but they're probably going to low ball their guesstimate.
Think about it. Look on eBay.
The minute your VIN# got associated with the word "accident", your vehicle's private resale value probably took about a $2000 hit. It's like the words "social disease" on a dating site. Doesn't matter how bad, or how often. Nobody wants to pay market rate for a vehicle that's been in an accident---and that's all the CarFax report is going to say..."accident".
State Farm's job isn't to make you whole in this matter. It should be....but it isn't. Their job is to make you go away, and to retian as much profit as they can for their investors (that's what they do with the premiums.)
See if there's an third party agent that specializes in diminished value claims in your area. LEAN on your adjuster for this data, but back check his/her info!!
If SF balks then you may have to litigate.
YOUR job is to make you whole after this accident, and a little bit of leg work on your part can make this happen without you having to resort to the neck brace and slimy, sniveling, bed-wetting attorney routine....and let's face it. Nobody wants that.
Good Luck!
Let us know how it shakes out.

My personal guesstimate: (current market value < $0.02) is $2500-$3000.

 

ETS makes a good argument, but I suspect it will be hard to get much for what most will consider cosmetic work.

Tom

 

Appraisals are supposed to be based on local market values, so see what your car is worth on trade-in, compared to similar cars that do not have your repair history. The difference is your diminished value.

 

Don't know if this will help or not, but my wife backed into our son-in-laws Sububan while backing out of our garage. Yea, I know, she had three mirrors, a back-up camera, and sensors and still didn't see a Suburban! Trust me she feels bad...

Anyway, the repair cost was over $5000 (2010 Lexus HS250h, damage to the Suburban = 0) and our insurance gave us $1600 for diminished value. Prior to this incident I didn't even know this existed. Thankfully, with her good driving record, we had accident forgiveness and we didn't take a hit on our insurance.

Sorry to hear about your accident, hope you are alright and your Prius is perfect when you get it back. Just curious, who did the repairs? We had Nalley Collision (behind the Acura Dealership) do ours and they did an awesome job!

 

Body repairs requiring repainting will diminish the value somewhat especially if it is reported to to CarFAX or another similar service. However, it will be less the longer you wait to sell the car. If you sell a 2010 in 2011 with a repainted tailgate and replaced bumper cover, it will make much more of a difference than if you wait until 2017 to sell the same vehicle.
If you have photos of the accident damage and you sell to a private party, you can show them the actual damage, because the will likely imagine that it was worse than it was if all they know is that it was "in a wreck"

 

Are you going after the dealer for the diminished value on your brand new bumper or can you only play that once per part?

Prius shoppers can't be that well educated since used cars are often misidentified as 2 recent buyers will testify.

 

I don't know much about diminished value, but if the repairs total $1,600, I don't see how the diminished value can be more than that. Otherwise, everyone would profit from being in a relatively minor accident.

Glad it wasn't more serious and good luck with the settlement!

 

Diminished value really only comes into play if it gets reported to carfax and the dealer is not going to report damage they caused themselves. Otherwise, the would-be buyer isn't guaranteed to know about the damage.

 

So, it might not be more than that, but do you want to lose $1600 at resale? You still lose value even after the repair is fixed especially if you are trying to sell a car that is close to new. People don't want to buy near new cars that don't have all factory original paint.
If you sell the car 8 or more years down the road, a repainted body panel won't make much difference. However, if the buyer is unsure of how bad the original damage was, they may avoid buying the car just to be safe and that would still hurt resale.

 

This is true if you are selling to a private party, but being as OP had her selling dealership do the work, if she were to trade it on another Toyota at that dealership, they would be indicating they had no faith in their own body shop if they gave her any less on trade due to the accident, and I would be sure to bring this up if they tried...

 

Simply having the accident history attached to the car makes it less attractive for resale no matter how well it was repaired.
A car that was repainted "very well" is not the same as a car that never had an accident requiring new paint. People are picky about buying very late model cars. They will simply choose a different car if they are expected to pay the same price for a repainted car as one that was never damaged.

 

I agree 100% with you, what I was saying is the dealership taking the car on trade should not devalue the car if they did the repairs. What's that saying about their body shop?

Selling it is a totally different process and at that point it has become the dealership's problem, not the prior owner's.

Dealerships have plenty of leeway on what they give on trades and if they wanted to maintain me as a loyal customer, I'm sure they would give me full trade-in value (as if it's never been in an accident) and make up the loss in other ways...