just came off my uk-registered 2005 kawasaki z750 owing to some cowboy pulling out into my lane without indication.

one broken left wrist and one broken right finger later, i have now had the insurance people confirm that the bike is uneconomical to repair. they reckon that the thing is worth £4000 and that the salvage value is worth £360. consequently they will send a cheque for £3640 when liability has been concluded. the uk list price is circa £5500 and there was an expensive alarm on it.

anyone know what the right thing is to do here? do I have to haggle for a better price? can i take out the alarm for a new installation?

seems an expensive exercise considering it had only done 1200 miles. still i'm just glad the accident wasnt worse.

thanks, dominic

dude sorry about the bike
you need to get back to them and tell them that there offer is unsatisfactory, and also the cost of alarm should be included, eespecialy if they used the alarm as part of there insurance quote, never take first offer i never do, but dont get to greedy
goood luck dude

remember that your never going to meet the person your haggling with over the phone so dont get embarrassed to haggle

Sh*t dude that's bad luck!

Where abouts in the UK are ya,£5500 seem's a lot to pay for the 750,i picked up my '05 Z750 brand new a few months back for £4695.After i had had a tail tidy,crash bungs,LED indicators etc and an alarm fitted by the dealer the whole thing only came to £5200.

Now regarding the insurance claim,you can reject thier offer of settlement saying that you don't think that is enough.May i suggest that you try and find some example's of the same bike,same colour,similar sort of mileage etc for sale for more money than thier offer,otherwise they won't increase it.Try looking in places like MCN Bikemart and Autotrader etc,after my '03 ZX6R B1 was stolen earlier on this year i had to do this as thier first offer of a payout was just not enough and was also considerably less than what i had the bike insured for.

Sorry to hear about your off mate. But glad you are alive and relatively intact. Don't know anything about the UK and insurance so hopefully one of your fellow countrymen will chime in with some constructive information. When some tosser mowed me over, I got full retail price for my SV1000 which, fortunately for me, paid the bike off. Good luck and I hope you find a satisfactory resolution to all this. Ride safe.

Russ

Sorry about the off

Stick to what you think what the bike is worth and negotiate from there.
I had the same problem when some one nicked my ZRX they offered me £3999
for a bike 13 months old and 4000m on the clock. Politley asked them to purchase me one and put it on my drive for that price and i would accept then told them I wanted full market value. They coughed up less my excess of £150!! So not bad, don't get angry or shout just explain your reasons(I also pointed that if they were not happy with my valuation of the bike when I insured it they should have sent an engineer to value it.

On the plus side i have a red z750 for sale that we could negotiate on

Sorry to hear about your accident -- glad you weren't hurt worse. Not sure how fault is established in the UK -- Is the other party's insurance the one you're dealing with? When my Z was totaled in an accident where the other driver was at fault, his insurance company gave me "fair market value" for the bike AND payed me for all the accessories I had on the bike. There was no salvage value reduction, but of course they kept the bike.

Good luck!

Defo don't accept their first offer, they want you to take it as it saves them money, paperwork and the expense of having to deal with someone, keep haggling and as Zedhead says tell them to buy you a like for like for the price their willing to give you, get quotes form big dealers to back up your claim ie this shop have given me a written quote for a XXplate with xx miles on it, and factor in your inconvience time, bus fares or taxi fares, new helmet,leather, loss or earnings when setting it all out and tell them you want to claim for all of that, and you may find that they up the price a lot to get rid of all the incidental expences that you as the blameless part are due.

Give rider support a call, see what they reckon...

http://www.ridersupport.com/pngs/index.htm

how old is the bike exactly if its less than 6 months old they should pay you the current retail price plus any extras- thats what is says on my carol nash fully comp insurance. anyway you could buy the bike back and repair it with the money or break it on ebay

Hi guys,

Thanks for all of your feedback and kind words.

I bought the bike less than 6 months ago from a dealership in Reading. I ended up paying about £4,750 excluding any extras (or the alarm) for it.

I was just thinking that is such a huge discrepancy bewteen the list price and a quote for a bike that has barely been run-in yet.

I have seen that in the last few months in the bike magazines you could get simply sensational deals on new '04 plate machines~ £4100, £4200. However I don't think the insurers had this in mind when they calculated my quote!

If I was to take the money and run, I would still need another thousand pounds (or maybe more) to get on a similar machine with a new helmet etc.

It makes me think that this quote is the preliminary salvo in a long and bloodied war!

With regards to my injuries, there was a point where I was walking around with a cast on one arm and a cast on the other! It made me look like an extra out of The Mummy!

Any many thanks,

Dominic

You are entitled to be returned to the position you were in prior to the accident. Which magazine is very good for this sort of thing or you could try the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Sorry to hear about the wreck! Hopefully you and the insurance company can work things out to get you back up and running.