When your insurer's number is lower than your loss
Diminished value and total loss disputes turn on the valuation, and the valuation is usually contestable.
Not available yet
We are not accepting auto insurance advocacy files yet. This page describes how the process is designed to work, not a service you can start today. The panel of independent appraisers it depends on is not in place, and nothing here should be read as a claim that it is.
What this usually looks like
A repaired car is worth less than one that was never hit, and that gap is real money you lose the day you try to sell. It is called diminished value, and whether an insurer pays it depends heavily on the policy, the state, and whether anyone pushes.
Total loss valuations have the same shape. The figure an insurer arrives at comes from a valuation report, and those reports rest on comparable vehicles, condition adjustments, and mileage assumptions that are frequently wrong in the insurer's favour.
Neither of these is a fight about whether you were owed something. It is a disagreement about an amount, and most policies contain a mechanism built specifically for resolving that.
Your car was repaired and you were paid nothing for the loss in value
The repair was covered, but the car now carries an accident history that follows it to every future sale.
The total loss offer does not match what the car was worth
The comparables in the valuation report are older, higher-mileage, or in worse condition than the car you actually owned.
The adjuster's condition rating was wrong
A well-kept vehicle graded as average, or recent work like new tyres and a replaced transmission left out of the number entirely.
What we take on in this area
How it works from here
Read the process for auto insurance for the whole shape of it, or what financial redress means if this is the first you have heard of any of it.
Finding out where you stand costs nothing. There is a charge when we take an advocacy file on, and after that we are only paid out of what we recover.
Tell us about the claim
Two minutes, no payment, and a straight answer on whether the gap is worth pursuing.
Would rather read first? How the process works or start the full application.