Has anyone else ever had the misfortune to have to deal with CoPart after an insurance write-off?
Our 55 reg Panda was hit from behind by a Transit van just before Christmas. We had it recovered to our local (trusted) garage and informed the insurance company. It was taken away within a couple of days by CoPart without our permission, or even our knowledge. We have had no official communication from CoPart, either by letter or email, to confirm that it has been written off. They gave us a valuation, by telephone, that was ridiculously low and that turned out to be based on completely inaccurate information - the were assessing it as a manual in average condition with average mileage, when it is actually a duologic in excellent condition with less than 17k miles from new. Despite several calls from us and from the insurance company they have not made any kind of decent valuation and have been extremely unprofessional, and in fact downright rude, whenever we have phoned them. They appear to treat the insurance company, who have been trying hard to help, with the same contempt as they do us. Also, despite several requests they have not returned our belongings that were in the car at the time of the accident.
As it stands, as far as we are concerned they have stolen our car - they took it away without our permission and legally it still belongs to us until we accept an offer from the insurance company - and are holding it to ransom.
A quick internet check showed 249 TrustPilot reviews, 99% bad, with a rating of 1 out of 5, which is still more than I would rate them...
Has anyone else had any experience of this company? And, if so, have you any advice on how to deal with them?
Cheers...
J.R.

I would seek legal advice but my thoughts are that they have indeed taken your car without consent and would report the car as stolen to the police and get the crime reference number. This gives you a solid stake in the ground. If it transpires that they had some form of proxy consent via the insurance company etc. then this will/should come out in the wash.

And I've just checked their website and they officially trade/function as "Copart Used and Salvage Car Auctions". How the hell did they get their hands on YOUR car. It is your car until you agree to and insurance settlement and most decent insurance companies do/used to give you the first option to buy back the car.

Dare I ask who the insurance company is? They must have authorised an insurance assessor who subsequently deemed the cost of repair to exceed a repair threshold. Could be that they used CoPart for this process and the car was removed for assessment. CoPart are not truly independent (they want to make money out of your loss) and now seeing how big they are alarm bells are heavily ringing in my ears. How many other insurance companies are using CoPart services.

Lastly the garage where your car was taken too were trusted with the care of your vehicle. They must/should have signed an authorisation/release for your vehicle to be collected and removed from their care. Get a copy of that paperwork ASAP.

We’ve had some dealings with this company over my mothers car that was written off. To cut a very long story short! CoPart turned up at my mothers address (She is 80 years old) and told her that they were there to collect the car. At no point had she been informed of this by either of said company or her insurance company.

Fortunately, she had the sense to call me at work and I told her not to let them remove the car from her house. The driver wanted to talk to me and said that he was going to remove the car! I told him that he wasn’t and if he did I would report the car as stolen! I told him to leave my mothers house or I would leave work and come and have a little chat!!! He gave the phone back to my mum and left.

I would report your car as stolen, as it’s still your property until you have agreed a price for salvage via your insurance company. Contact Citizens advise and a local law firm to seek advise.

Because we had possession of the car, it left us in a good position to come to a deal with the insurance company. I believe that if the car was taken, we would have been offered a diminished settlement.

Fight your corner! Contact the insurance ombudsman (In writing) and explain what’s happened.

I hope you get your belongings back and a proper outcome to this situation

Interesting info/experience KungFooPanda.

I now even more than ever what to know what garages and insurance companies use these *astards.

Your mum was lucky that her car was at her home location and not at a garage.

Sounds / looks like this may be a growing trend some for of hand off between the insurance industry (cutting their costs), benefit and profit to salvage companies and a massive loss and nightmare for the car owner who is probably already distressed and may even be unconscious in hospital.

It's not that new - same thing happened to my mother nearly 10 years ago.
Car was obviously a write-off, but still contained personal possessions. Insurance company sent out an assessor, then the car was collected the next day. She only found out when she rang the insurer to arrange to empty it out.
Their reasoning was that it now belonged to them, and they didn't want to pay continuing storage fees for it.
She was distinctly unimpressed, but as the car was now 90 miles away she gave in and accepted their settlement.
I was really angry on her behalf when she told me, but by then it was too late to do much.
Interested to hear how this turns out...

s130 said:

Interesting info/experience KungFooPanda.

I now even more than ever what to know what garages and insurance companies use these *astards.

Your mum was lucky that her car was at her home location and not at a garage.

Sounds / looks like this may be a growing trend some for of hand off between the insurance industry (cutting their costs), benefit and profit to salvage companies and a massive loss and nightmare for the car owner who is probably already distressed and may even be unconscious in hospital.

Click to expand...

They pray on people who have already gone though an ordeal and have suffered. Fortunately, I’d heard about the sharp practice they employ! I was more than prepared for it.

I can’t abide companies that chance there arm at doing you over. The Mrs got a parking ticket at a supermarket. If you pay within such a time the penalty will be reduced to £55!!!! Well- as some might (Or May not know) these fines are not enforceable as it’s private property and not in the public highway. Only two (That I’m aware of) that can book a vehicle is a Police office and a traffic wardens.

I was highly amused by the letters that came from the company, with ever increasing figures to pay. This went from £55 all the way up to almost £400. I even had letters from there solicitors suggestion that they would persuade the court to favour costs to them. I use to look forward to getting there letters and seeing how Pi**ed off they were getting! Until one day it stopped- BOO I was having such fun to ?

I think the point here is not to allow these Ti*ts get away with what they conceive to be a lawful business.

Last accident I had many years ago I got the RAC to recover my car to my home address as opposed to some garage. Thankfully/fortunately I was not disabled from making the right calls. I could have been whisked away in an ambulance and thus loose total control and I guess then the police call the recovery/salvage services and then **** may/could happen.

Thanks for all the comments guys...
I'll keep you informed of any progress. The latest is that the insurance company have agreed to assess the car themselves - no valuation yet though...

KungFooPanda said:

They pray on people who have already gone though an ordeal and have suffered. Fortunately, I’d heard about the sharp practice they employ! I was more than prepared for it.

I can’t abide companies that chance there arm at doing you over. The Mrs got a parking ticket at a supermarket. If you pay within such a time the penalty will be reduced to £55!!!! Well- as some might (Or May not know) these fines are not enforceable as it’s private property and not in the public highway. Only two (That I’m aware of) that can book a vehicle is a Police office and a traffic wardens.

I was highly amused by the letters that came from the company, with ever increasing figures to pay. This went from £55 all the way up to almost £400. I even had letters from there solicitors suggestion that they would persuade the court to favour costs to them. I use to look forward to getting there letters and seeing how Pi**ed off they were getting! Until one day it stopped- BOO I was having such fun to ?

I think the point here is not to allow these Ti*ts get away with what they conceive to be a lawful business.

Click to expand...

In England at least these companies can now take you to caught and a. CCJ against you for the ticket plus costs so ignoring it isn't always the best thing now

chris3234 said:

In England at least these companies can now take you to caught and a. CCJ against you for the ticket plus costs so ignoring it isn't always the best thing now

Click to expand...

I got this in Dundee..
Because car was registered in England.. it was not pursued.

Thanks to website 'parkingcowboys'

chris3234 said:

In England at least these companies can now take you to caught and a. CCJ against you for the ticket plus costs so ignoring it isn't always the best thing now

Click to expand...

Worked for me ?. I would like to see them try it in Wales ???????.

Most recent update...
We have, finally, after ten weeks of asking received the engineer's report, along with the photographs of the car and the personal items (seat covers and CD's) from within the car. The seat covers had be damaged beyond all usefulness during their removal and had been thrown into the foot-well - they can be seen in CoParts photographs and they have muddy footprints on them.
This company are truly awful people to deal with - uncaring, rude and inefficient. Sadly our insurance company is proving to be no better...

JR45 said:

Most recent update...
We have, finally, after ten weeks of asking received the engineer's report, along with the photographs of the car and the personal items (seat covers and CD's) from within the car. The seat covers had be damaged beyond all usefulness during their removal and had been thrown into the foot-well - they can be seen in CoParts photographs and they have muddy footprints on them.
This company are truly awful people to deal with - uncaring, rude and inefficient. Sadly our insurance company is proving to be no better...

Click to expand...

Please do tell us as soon as you can which company this is so we can avoid using them or any of their subsidiaries. This is a useful warning that we should publicise as widely as possible by word of mouth. I shall instruct my broker that in the event of my car being damaged they are not to use this company in any capacity if they want to retain my business. Fortunately I believe they haveth own arrangements in place so I hope it will never occur. perhaps the accident management scheme offered by Fiat might be worth something significant!

This is not the sort of thing to contend with when trying to sort things out financially & car wise. Of no help to your self, but last year I had my diesel hack written off by someone who was not paying attention. No problem with insurers other than it took ages, but I was a bit surprised at the salvage people, well known & trusted in these parts. Met the driver with his loader complete with five or six write off cars, can't remember, it seemed fully loaded to me, very agitated, in a hurry, no time to really speak, get my vehicle on the loader while throwing paperwork at me to sign.

Obviously he had a job to do, again obviously he had been all over the Highland area picking up vehicles. It was all over in a flash, I was left standing there, paperwork copy in my hand with just memories of my ten year ownership. Probably what I'm relating to, even when things tend to go reasonably well, it's still not the best of situations.

Panda Nut :
The salvage company are CoPart.
I will quite happily name the insurance company as soon as they have paid the claim - no fault accident on Dec 17th, still awaiting payment...

Another week has passed, and still absolutely nothing from the insurance company - despite them promising to keep us updated of the progress...
Eleven weeks on from the accident and still no money...

So - here we are again - another week on... Twelve weeks on from the accident.
Despite their promises the insurance company did not assess the car themselves, just looked at the photos from CoPart. They did not keep us appraised of the progress of our complaint either. Their response to our complaint has been to send us a letter (which has all the appearance of a form letter) apologising for the service not reaching the expected standard and attaching a cheque for £250; it does not address any of the points raised and detailed in our complaint. They have repeated their final valuation offer.
Ironically, totally independently we have received a renewal reminder from a different department within the same company - why would I renew insurance on a vehicle that was a write-off three months ago? Another example of their utter incompetence... To be honest I wouldn't renew with them if they were the last insurance company on earth...
Next stop - a complaint to the FOS.

Well... Another minor update...
Our car is currently advertised for sale on CoPart's auction website. Which is interesting - because we haven't accepted a final offer on it yet so, legally, it still belongs to us. As I see it, and I'm willing to be corrected if I'm wrong, they are currently trying to sell a car that legally belongs to us - which must surely be illegal?

They should have to get the relevant paperwork and keys from you.

If the insurance company have asked for and you have sent the v5 then you have likely signed it over to the insurance company.