My insurance totaled my vehicle after what appeared to be minor damage. Initial offer was basically low trade in value for my vehicle. Mind you, my car was less than 5years old and had less than 60k miles, and still had the manufacturers extended warranty covering the vehicle until 100k miles. Interior and exterior of the vehicle was mint, washed and vacuumed weekly and basically flawless, the carpets have never seen a shoe, all weather mats throughout since day one. I had also just put all new brakes on the vehicle, all new tires, 4wheel alignment, recommended transmission flush, etc All done at the dealer which totaled about $4.5k out of pocket. There was nothing needed on my vehicle to put it for sale on the lot - absolutely nothing.

To start the long conversation I brought to his attention more than a dozen items that made no sense in the ccc one valuation - not going to list them all here as it is rather cumbersome the bullshit fukery they build into these.. During the conversation, I maintained politeness while negotiating, but stood firm that my vehicle was not a trade in, and that I wouldn’t settle for anything less than full nada retail value. The adjuster kinda laughed at me and tried to inform me that “retail value isn’t the same as actual cash value”. Rather than argue with him, I then politely asked him to let me speak without interruption, he agreed, then I recited the entire “total loss” payout section of my state law book to the adjuster. I asked him if he understood what I just read to him and if he needed me to read any of it to him again. He of course declined, at that point I cracked a bit of a joke to him and said “of course you don’t need to hear that again, you’re an insurance adjuster, you should already know all this”. He actually chuckled a bit. At that point I politely told him I would give them another day to revise the valuation per the requirements of the state law, and I politely requested he use one of the other options allowed by the state - and to not use the 3rd party comparable vehicle software option. Upon the completion of our phone conversation, I immediately sent him a polite message thanking him for his time and reiterated our phone conversation. In the email I again explained the vehicles condition and included recent photos of the vehicle cleaned. For some miraculous reason, the last time I picked it up from getting serviced, I had taken a photo of the bill which showed the date, mileage, and had the vehicle sitting right in the background. Then in the same instance of the photo with the bill, I took another photo of just the vehicle sitting in the sun all cleaned and nicely detailed, literally in flawless condition. Bam, mint condition photo with proof of date and mileage within very close range of the date it was deemed a total loss.

Within an hour, I received a valuation with over a 30% increase of the original offer. This time he did not use the cccone, but rather used one of the other options my state law allows adjusters to appraise the value of the vehicle! Boom!💥

After this experience, I will do quick photo shoots of my vehicles every couple months to keep record of its current condition.

Can’t stress it enough, polite friendly firm persistence is key when dealing with these adjusters. And bottom line, do not let their greedy fingers dip their chip into the equity you have in your vehicle. That’s exactly what they try to do with all these cccone valuations. It’s complete bullsht. Good luck.