Insurance question - diminished value help

I was rear ended on the freeway last June.  Basic fender bender, new bumper and rear hatch on my 22 Tiguan.  Repairs have mostly been covered, the license plate was wrecked and I cannot get a call back to get fixed, not overly concerned with it.  

Diminished value is a different issue.  Both of us have Flo for insurance and they closed my comprehensive claim and moved it all to the other drivers claim number.  Request for diminished claim came back that my car was actually worth more due to the accident and denied.  The backup for this was they found 1 car at a Beverly Hills Mercedes dealership (I am in Phoenix) with an accident and compared the asking sales price to cars local to me at more pedestrian dealer ships.

What is my next step?  Do I file in small claims against the other driver and let them get it out of insurance?  Anyone ever have luck with the state insurance board?  Small claims filing against insurance company?  How would that work? Who would I serve?

Any input or past solutions that worked are appreciated.

Worth more due to the accident.... are they high? There are people who do appraisals like this for a living. I'd find one of them and see what they have to say. They can help with comps and maybe knowing what buttons to press.  If you need to move on to legal means small claims vs the other driver. They're the ones liable and if the insurance won't make you whole, you can collect that way. I'm sure an appraiser will have better details for you though. FWIW what are you looking at for lost value? That might inform how much effort you're willing to expend here.

I had success sending an email to the Flo company explaining how I expected a check for the diminished value according to the 17c formula.

I got exactly what I asked for.  I may have gotten more some other way, but I was ok with the amount calculated per 17c, which is an industry standard:

17c formula:

1. Determine your car’s value pre-accident. The easiest way to do this is to use either the Kelley Blue Book or NADA online calculator.

2. Apply a 10% cap. Insurance companies assume your car won’t depreciate by more than 10%, so we start with this number and apply multipliers to decide the final percent change.

3. Apply a damage multiplier. The insurance company will assess the damage to your car and apply a number from zero to one indicating the severity of the damage.

• 1.00 = Severe structural damage
• 0.75 = Major damage to structure and panels
• 0.50 = Moderate damage to structure and panels
• 0.25 = Minor damage to structure and panels
• 0.00 = No structural damage or replaced panels

This range can include any number from zero to one, not just increments of 0.25. This number is multiplied by the 10% cap.

4. Apply a mileage multiplier. Your car’s value is further adjusted to reflect the car’s mileage.

• 1.0 = 0–19,999 miles
• 0.8 = 20,000–39,999 miles
• 0.6 = 40,000–59,999 miles
• 0.4 = 60,000–79,999 miles
• 0.2 = 80,000–99.999 miles
• 0.0 = 100,000+

For example, if your car has 25,000 miles on it, you’ll multiply your adjusted value for damages by 0.8.

That's the basic guideline that carriers use for DV, however it's not a true standard.  17c came out of a case in GA, created by someone at Snake Farm.  GA Department of Insurance went so far as to say they do not endorse or recognize it. My point in telling you this is that you don't want to go to Regressive and say they owe it to you based on 17c.  They don't.  

DV is purely subjective so companies use things like 17c to help them get a settlement range.  I wrote the DV guidelines for two different carriers.  As the previous post said, it's based on things such as mileage, damage severity and vehicle value pre accident.  Don't look at the dollar amount of the estimate, it's pretty much irrelevant.  What was the damage?  Cosmetic, structural, etc...  You can use the above formula as a basic guide for a place to start, just understand that it's not a hard and fast rule or law.  It is , however , a great place to start. If you filed suit, it would be against the policy holder.  The DOI can strongly encourage the carrier to pay but cannot actually force them.

My experience with DV is it's one of those times it's easier to have a "diminished value expert" write the report and pay them the $300-$400 they charge, then ask for whatever amount they come up with plus the cost of the report. It seems like the companies like that vs a regular person making up a number. 

I went through this in AZ about 6 years ago and it was extremely frustrating.  Most of the at-fault driver's insurance reps simply refused to admit DV even existed.  I tried using the 17c formulation as a starting point and they didn't want to hear it.  At the time, I couldn't find a DV expert in our area that had any kind of verifiable reputation, and I didn't want to deal with small claims so I punted.

Hopefully things are better now, but be prepared for a frustrating battle.

Nicole's Clarity took a minor hit a few years ago. Only real damage was a fender, but it also got a hood and bumper because the fender crunched up their edges a bit.

We asked the at-fault driver's company, Geico IIRC, for diminished value assuming it would be a giant fight. They conveniently forgot to return calls and emails for a few days, then when it was clear we were going to keep calling they offered about $3k (10-15% of the car's value). We took the money and ran; seemed too close to be worth fighting.

This was in Florida. 

In reply to former520 :

It is relatively easy to determine diminished value but not always a simple matter to obtain comprehensive information. For us, we estimate the diminished value based on similar appraisals from our database of thousands of assignments. Then, we call VW dealers in AZ until we obtain six unbiased opinions of the sales managers. Very time consuming but it represents real-world research vs. all of the short-cuts such as formulas, ad comparisons, algorithms, book value comparisons, etc. 

Rule of thumb, if there was no structural damage or airbag deployment, most vehicles will lose 10%-15% of their pre-accident fair market value. If either of those occurred you are looking at 30%-50% back. The dollar amount of the repair is a minor consideration and there should absolutely be no ceiling.

DV claims are actually quite hard to argue and prove to an insurance company.  Plenty of good advice on this post, but still a pita to accomplish.

camopaint0707 said:

DV claims are actually quite hard to argue and prove to an insurance company.  Plenty of good advice on this post, but still a pita to accomplish.

I've done it 4 times, and has a friend that has done it 2 times, no issues at all. As posted above, we had someone else write the report, so there was nothing to "prove". We gave it to them in writing from a 3rd party.