I spent about an hour today with a very helpful and experienced auto insurance person trying to locate an appraisal firm approved by ICBC. At every turn, we were defeated, and this was with her dealing directly with ICBC head office via their internal line.
Q1. Has anyone here found a place that can appraise an HDJ81 AND that will be accepted by ICBC?
Q2. Failing a satisfactory ICBC solution, is there an aftermarket company from which a policy dealing with the increased value of an HDJ81 could be dealt with? If so, what company?
Background: Since Nick's rollover and his payout, I realized if my vehicle got stolen and trashed or wrecked in an accident, I would get killed on a payout. I'm not expecting to get paid everything I have into it. Even 5 grand over ICBC's standard rate for that truck would be tolerable. (Which I believe is somewhere in the range of 23K for the truck + 5K = 28K, not quite enough but tolerable).
Here's what we found out: ICBC will not tell you the retail "value" of your truck unless there is a reason to do so. Insurance agents have access to some of these "retail" values but of course not for an HDJ81 which doesn't show up on their database at all. What I did get was that with an "approved appraisal" (which does not list where or who is "approved") that you can get $5000 more than "retail". Of course that leaves me in a feedback loop because I can't find an appraiser and I can't get the "retail" price, although I do have an estimate; see above.
The HDJ81 is NOT allowed to be insured for "declared value" because it's a "category 1" vehicle (basically in the same area as exotics from what I found). There is another policy for which you can crank up the value on your vehicle but it costs a HUGE amount of money, and I mean thousands a year. So that doesn't make sense.
I know a good to excellent HDJ81 can be purchased from an importer for around 24 grand (I mean with lockers and lowish k's). And to get one from Wayne, a really premium low mileage unit, around 32 grand. I also know that whatever else you spend on your truck, you can only expect to recover in resale about 20% of what you spent. Based on this information, and the fact that my truck has only about 128K on it and EVERYTHING done (and I mean pretty much everything), I believe it's now "worth" at least high 20's, and I have considerably more than that into it.
I know this is a bit lengthy but I wanted to explain my line of thinking. Ultimately, in 4-5 years, it won't matter so much because I'll have another 60-100K on the truck and the lower value will be something I could live with, but right now, the potential loss is too high to just ignore.
Suggestions?
Q1. Has anyone here found a place that can appraise an HDJ81 AND that will be accepted by ICBC?
Q2. Failing a satisfactory ICBC solution, is there an aftermarket company from which a policy dealing with the increased value of an HDJ81 could be dealt with? If so, what company?
Background: Since Nick's rollover and his payout, I realized if my vehicle got stolen and trashed or wrecked in an accident, I would get killed on a payout. I'm not expecting to get paid everything I have into it. Even 5 grand over ICBC's standard rate for that truck would be tolerable. (Which I believe is somewhere in the range of 23K for the truck + 5K = 28K, not quite enough but tolerable).
Here's what we found out: ICBC will not tell you the retail "value" of your truck unless there is a reason to do so. Insurance agents have access to some of these "retail" values but of course not for an HDJ81 which doesn't show up on their database at all. What I did get was that with an "approved appraisal" (which does not list where or who is "approved") that you can get $5000 more than "retail". Of course that leaves me in a feedback loop because I can't find an appraiser and I can't get the "retail" price, although I do have an estimate; see above.
The HDJ81 is NOT allowed to be insured for "declared value" because it's a "category 1" vehicle (basically in the same area as exotics from what I found). There is another policy for which you can crank up the value on your vehicle but it costs a HUGE amount of money, and I mean thousands a year. So that doesn't make sense.
I know a good to excellent HDJ81 can be purchased from an importer for around 24 grand (I mean with lockers and lowish k's). And to get one from Wayne, a really premium low mileage unit, around 32 grand. I also know that whatever else you spend on your truck, you can only expect to recover in resale about 20% of what you spent. Based on this information, and the fact that my truck has only about 128K on it and EVERYTHING done (and I mean pretty much everything), I believe it's now "worth" at least high 20's, and I have considerably more than that into it.
I know this is a bit lengthy but I wanted to explain my line of thinking. Ultimately, in 4-5 years, it won't matter so much because I'll have another 60-100K on the truck and the lower value will be something I could live with, but right now, the potential loss is too high to just ignore.
Suggestions?
