Modern Vespa

Cant believe it. Waited 44 years to buy my first Vespa - bought a 12 year old ET4 just 3 months ago.
Came home last Saturday after a day out to find it lying on its side in the driveway -think a gust of wind blew it over.
Phoned the insurance on Monday and they sent a garage to uplift it. At this point I had no thoughts at all that I would never see it again as all the damage I could see was a dent to the front "wing" where the chrome bar had pushed through it when it fell.
Phoned the garage yesterday as I hadnt heard anything and they told me they had contacted the insurance company advising that it wasnt economical to repair as on top of the visible damage the frame was bent.
Paid £600 for the scooter - had £150 excess on my insurance so have been offered £450 ......
Gutted doesnt even come close to how I feel at the moment. I initially bought the scooter as a new hobby intending to use it on dry days only for maybe 1 hr a week as a kind of chill out. Since getting it I got the bug and its been used daily in all weathers to and from work ...get twitchy if a day goes by and I wasnt out on it.
Absolutely skint at the moment and dont see me getting anything roadworthy for £450 so Im gonna be scooterless for a long time. which has put me on an absolute downer as I just sold one of my cars as we didnt need 2 now that I had the scooter .....the Gods seem against me at present !!

Bummer - so sorry to hear that.

I'd be amazed if the frame bent just from a fall onto the side.

It's more likely to be pre-existing damage that you weren't aware of when you bought it.

That's so sad. It's probably the age of it that devalued it even tho it was in good shape Wasn't quite old enough to be a classic and not new enough to get more money. Can you buy it back as a salvage scooter. Here you sometimes can and then you just find a cheap mechanic/body shop and your good to go. Don't know enough about your laws tho. I would get looking for your replacement scooter and it will ease you sorrow of the old one when you have another to enjoy. Sorry and good luck.

the book value of a scooter that old is low enough that it wouldn't take much for them to declare it a write-off. unless the claim is a done deal i'd just forget about it and ask for the scooter back. post some pictures - unless, as dr. z has pointed out, there was some serious existing damage, i doubt that it's unrideable - my boyfriend has dropped his ET4 'several' times and it's still just fine - not pretty, but perfectly safe to ride.

Ask them to buy for a few hundred or so. if you can in the UK

You can indeed buy vehicles that have been written off from the insurance company , but there are several categories and some of them can't legally be put back on the road.

http://www.insurancewriteoff.co.uk/

If it's a category D write off then the typical price they would sell for is 20% of the pre-crash value which would be £120.

If it rode ok and this was just cosmetic damage then it would be well worth buying it back and doing a cheap repair to tidy it up.

For frame damage they are may have classed it as a category B write off which you can't use again.

His post said wind may have blown it over so I'm sure paint damage only. age is the factor for salvage in this case

+1. Seems very likely that the scoot already had a bent frame. If so, you are really quite lucky to get out of this with a payoff from your insurance. Go out and buy another scoot, ride it, have fun.

it sounds like you had fully comprehensive, in which case i'm actually surprised that your insurance company didn't advise you just to go for third-party only - my boyfriend has a 1997 ET4 and that's what they advised him when he went to insure it this year - as i noted already, the book value on a 12 year old machine is so low that it doesn't really make financial sense to insure it for anything else.

Get a second opinon

You can buy it back from the insurers. You're only allowed to insure it 'third party only' afterwards, but no reason why you can't still make a project out of it. I'd ask them to show you the kink in the frame. It could just be their way of making the write-off easier to complete.

Just because the garage said the frame was bent, doesn't mean they know what they are talking about... If there is a dent in the body metal, they can and will call that a bent frame. Since most vespa's body metal is the frame. It does not affect the alignment of the wheels or steering at all. There is no way it hit hard enough from falling over to mess up the alignment... dent the body yes..
They get the same money even if they do not have to work on it. I would demand to have the alignment checked, and at the very least keep the scoot, do not let them toss it... I would not put it past one of the staff at the garage to want to keep it and fix it up himself... But then I am very sincal of shops...

A hard lesson learned. It's not worth insuring anything worth GBP1200 or less fully comp - third party only is just fine. In this case, as I'm sure your hindsight is now telling you, you should have just accepted the scrapes and dents and carried on riding it.

Get a second opinion at the very least - sometimes a dealer or assessor will prefer to write something off than repair it. If you tell them you'll accept it in present condition, and don't ask for repairs they might tear up the paperwork. If it's already on the books as a class B write-off that won't be possible though.

It's not always that straightforward , depending on your age and insurance history.

For a ten year old ET4 I agree it's probably not worth paying much more for Fully Comp than TPFT , but this year it cost me £130 to insure my two bikes with fully comp cover and a £100 excess.

For TPFT cover it would have been £125 and had a £250 excess.

Either way I doubt I'd have bothered making a claim for a bike that had fallen over.

Awright Mark?

Gutted for you man, terrible news. I don't suppose it was Ride On that did the estimate? Fuckers tried to write mine off. When I went to pick it up the mechanics were joking about how what it really needed was a match or some similar mechanic line. In retrospect, that was pretty insensitive given my fragile emotional state caused by the worry over the scoot. Any road, long story cut short sees me take it to a much more appropriate garage that doesn't sell new bikes.

Definitely see about buying the thing back off them. Maybe if things work out as some of the above posters are suggesting, you might be left with change off your claim money!

Hang in there dude.

Just taken the plunge and bought a 3 year old LX125 with under 2000 miles. Contacted the insurance after reading the posts on here but it was already sold so I think that tells its own story. Gotcheque within 3 days though so quite pleased at that.

Cant wait to get backon the road !!

good to hear you are back on the road