Negotiate insurance claim?

[Brad Richards]

Three years ago I damaged my '93 SE-R and did the runaround with the
insurance company.  Their initial valuation was just about half what
the book value was, and was based on a survey of local prices.  (I'd
just been shopping for our second '93 SE-R at the time and knew that
their numbers were way out of line with what local dealers and
private parties were paying as well.)

I remained polite, but asked for documentation on their valuation.
The agent faxed me a list of about 400 recent Sentra sales that were
averaged to come up with their number, and I found that vast majority
were "E" models and other cheapies.  When I pointed this out, he
offered to run another price survey specifying only SE-Rs, but over a
larger geographic area to get enough samples.  I agreed, but they had
some snafu at their end and weren't able to perform the search.

At that point, they revealed that they actually *could* use book
values in a case like this, and came up with a value that was just
about right as far as I was concerned.  But they seemed quite willing
to show me how they'd arrived at the value, and understood the issue
immediately when I pointed out they hadn't measured the "right
value".  (Though it is pretty slimey that they don't just look for
your model in the price surveys by default...)

	Brad