Diminished Value And Your Rights
October 5, 2007 – 5:37 am
There you were driving down the road, paying attention as you should, when out of the blue another driver runs a stop sign and nails you. Fortunately, no one is hurt but there is substantial damage to your vehicle. Not to worry, the other driver is insured and his insurance company will pay to repair the damage to your car. You get a few estimates from local body shops and it looks like it will cost about $2,500 to repair the damage. His insurance company cuts you a check, you get your vehicle repaired and life is good . . . or so you think! There is one issue that you failed to consider when you were dealing with the insurance company. Almost every vehicle that has been in a wreck will have some form of inherent diminished value (I know – that sounds bad and really can be).
Diminished value is a term that describes the loss to a damaged vehicle’s market value after repairs have been completed. Any vehicle that has been wrecked and repaired is affected regardless of the quality of restoration. Experts estimate that 55% of consumers would not buy a car that had been in an accident. As many as 81% of potential car buyers say they would not have a car that had been in a wreck unless it was discounted substantially.
The days of sliding a wrecked car by on a dealership are gone. Almost all dealerships will run a Car Fax report that will show the owner, mileage and body repair history. You can bank that the dealership is going to deduct diminished value from their offer and it may be as high as 50% of it’s retail market value depending on the year, make and model. So, before you accept a settlement offer from an insurance company, make sure you have an expert evaluate the vehicle to determine the diminished value.
On his website, consumer advocate Clark Howard writes:
“The insurance companies hate the idea of bringing you “whole” when a car is fixed, but there is a tremendous amount of money at stake. The Dallas Morning News has reported that insurance companies are low-balling people throughout Texas. One man was offered $250 on an $11,000 repair. He took the company to court and received $3,500. State Farm has said that it does not believe in diminished value. There have been so many problems that diminished value consultants are now available to help you handle a stingy insurance company. Many insurance companies say that diminished value will raise rates, but this is actually false. If there is a raise, then it will be minimal. Don’t let your insurance company cheat you out of the money you deserve!”
So make sure you stand up for your rights if you are unfortunate enough to suffer a loss as a result of an automobile crash.
It seems as though every guy I know covets a high-definition (HD) television system with surround sound. My brother-in-law told me that he watched the first half of a football game at a neighbor’s house who had an HD setup. Unfortunately, the quality of the picture was so good that when he tried to watch the second half on his own home system he was so disappointed that he just went out and cut the grass.
So you’re finally going to break down and buy a new computer for the family – maybe one of those new, dual core hot rods. If you have never bought a new PC before, you may be in for a surprise when you boot it up the first time. Chances are that your “new” computer is going to look like it has been hooked up to the internet for a month – without any spyware protection. Your brand new (fill in the name of your computer here) PC will probably boot up with a series of pop up advertisements encouraging you buy anti-virus software, sign up for Napster or any of a multitude of other services. If that isn’t bad enough, your desktop will be covered with shortcuts to ‘special offers’ and the system tray will already packed with programs that “phone home” regularly to make sure that the software that you didn’t want to begin with stays current.
The other day, I ran into a guy I knew from the my days as a Salem Fitness Center member. He is an avid cyclist and I see him spinning down the roads around Salem on a regular basis so naturally we started talking about cycling. I can always spot him on the road because he is one of few serious riders that doesn’t wear a helmet (he’s a good cyclist, not a smart cyclist). During our conversation, he mentioned that he had found a great website where he had been following the adventures of two guys who were on a two year bicycle tour.
Kaiser Permanente has teamed up with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to develop “The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective”, a game designed to teach kids about healthy eating and exercise.
Space, the final frontier – computer disk space that is. My first real computer had a 210 MB (that’s megabytes not gigabytes) hard disk drive and I didn’t think I would ever fill it up. Today I carry five times that amount of space in my pocket on my flash drive. What is even more incredible is how the price of computer disk space has continued to drop year after year. Not only is hard disk space cheap but you can get a ton of web-based storage space for free!
Hopefully, after reading the first three parts of this series, you are beginning to realize that, with a little effort, you can improve you ability to remember names and other information that will help you in all areas of your life. So far, we have discussed how the use of association and visualization can improve your recall. However, concentration is the glue that holds the entire memory process together.
I have written about various “add-ins” in the past. They are small programs that “add-in” features to programs like the Firefox browser, Excel, Word or others.
Every cop knows that he has to stay current with the vernacular of the street. Most of us are pretty good with the various street drug names but how well versed are you on electronic lingo? Oh sure, you probably can identify lol (laugh out loud) or c u l8r (see you later) but what about phrases like “pwn”. It originally meant to dominate a video game opponent, as in “You got pwned!” However, it has evolved to mean dominating anyone. Knowledge such as this could be critical to an investigation where Instance Messenger or cell phone text messages are part of your evidence.
I can’t imagine life without the internet and all of the great tools that are available like e-mail, websites and blogs. However, it is important to keep an eye out for innovative new tools that can improve your workflow so that you can have more time to use the internet for shopping and other fun stuff. I have found a new beta website that should streamline your workflow if you are working on a group project that requires feedback.
My son is 23 years old and, although I can remember his birth like it happened last night, some of the other events from 1984 are a little bit fuzzy. However, thanks to the annual Beloit College Mindset List, I can pull the events of 1984 back into focus. Each year, the college tries to remind us that the world is changing and the members of latest graduating class has a totally different frame of reference for life events than the older generations. The Mindset List also helps us to remember a few other tidbits of information like these little fun facts from 1984:
