I am a long-time lurker, first-time poster so please forgive me if this is in the wrong place or something.
I picked up my baby (Silver S85, VIN P26783) on 12/14/13. It's been almost a year of stellar driving and mostly stellar service experience while I racked up 21,000 miles on my baby I named Cassie. Until last week. I got into a small accident... It all went downhill from there....
The accident happened in Midtown Manhattan. I called 911, and then immediately called Tesla Roadside. Since the S has no spare tire I had to wait for the tow truck Tesla arranged. It took more than 90 minutes for the tow truck to arrive to take my baby to the Tesla-authorized body shop.
So the Tesla-certified body shop takes apart my car to check for the damage and meets the appraiser sent by my insurance (Ameriprise) to discuss the repair. A day later it turns out that Ameriprise is declaring my baby a total loss!! Why you ask? Apparently Tesla-certified body shops aren't cheap. In addition to the $10,000 in parts there's $20,000 in labor. Ameriprise decided they'd rather declare the car a total loss than pay $30k+tax for repair. Why you ask? Well here goes...
Since there's no KBB value for the S, apparently the insurance company can just arbitrarily decide the value! As it stands right now they estimate the value of my <1 year old perfectly maintained $90,000 baby at $70,000! (I owe $70k to US Bank on the car!) When I tried reaching Tesla to get a value so I can argue with the insurance company they first promised callbacks that never came and are now saying they don't know if they can give me a value at all.
Has anyone else had any such an experience before? Any advice on how to proceed with Ameriprise, the body shop and/or Tesla?
I picked up my baby (Silver S85, VIN P26783) on 12/14/13. It's been almost a year of stellar driving and mostly stellar service experience while I racked up 21,000 miles on my baby I named Cassie. Until last week. I got into a small accident... It all went downhill from there....
The accident happened in Midtown Manhattan. I called 911, and then immediately called Tesla Roadside. Since the S has no spare tire I had to wait for the tow truck Tesla arranged. It took more than 90 minutes for the tow truck to arrive to take my baby to the Tesla-authorized body shop.
So the Tesla-certified body shop takes apart my car to check for the damage and meets the appraiser sent by my insurance (Ameriprise) to discuss the repair. A day later it turns out that Ameriprise is declaring my baby a total loss!! Why you ask? Apparently Tesla-certified body shops aren't cheap. In addition to the $10,000 in parts there's $20,000 in labor. Ameriprise decided they'd rather declare the car a total loss than pay $30k+tax for repair. Why you ask? Well here goes...
Since there's no KBB value for the S, apparently the insurance company can just arbitrarily decide the value! As it stands right now they estimate the value of my <1 year old perfectly maintained $90,000 baby at $70,000! (I owe $70k to US Bank on the car!) When I tried reaching Tesla to get a value so I can argue with the insurance company they first promised callbacks that never came and are now saying they don't know if they can give me a value at all.
Has anyone else had any such an experience before? Any advice on how to proceed with Ameriprise, the body shop and/or Tesla?
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