There was absolutely no way I could walk into anything but the most decrepit used car dealer and walk out with a car anywhere near what I previously owned for what they gave me, completely unrelated to whether or not I had a loan. The KBB was around 20k dealer. They gave me the crumb not fully loaded non F-sport (a $5k package) private party low end. $15k was shockingly low. Mine had like, 15k miles and the 15k range had over 100k. Their criteria seemed to be "Lexus I of some sort, cheapest." I don't think the IS250 was even normally that low.

Maybe it's what they all do, but it sucks. And it's not what a lot of people expect.

FWIW our car (2014 RAV4 EV) was totaled in California in 2018, and the insurance payout pretty much exactly covered replacing it with a near-identical new model (actually a bit lower mileage!) from a local used car dealer. I think we actually came out a few hundred dollars ahead.

We were insured with Travelers.

I’ve wondered since then if that’s how it usually works out, or if we were a lucky fluke.

Travelers does well with that. I switched after I was in a not at fault accident (other side was a commercial vehicle, fully insured, 100% admitted liability) and got screwed over by my own insurer (low ball offer on the value, stalling on giving me access to the comps until the night before the offer expired, reneging on rental coverage, threatening to not cover something with PIP...)

I have two "new" cars (2019 and 2021 model years) that I've had since they were less than a year old, and have new car replacement on both.

Travelers is relatively unique in that their new car replacement is up to 5 years, not 1 as most are (some go to 2 or 3). NCR also integrates gap coverage.

If my 2021 RS 5 gets totaled two years from now, I get a check for 110% of the MSRP for a 2026 RS 5.

We had our i3 totalled a few years ago. Insurance company guy was transparent and said he'd gone to our version of Craigslist here in Norway, found i3's of same age and similar milage, and took the average.

As such I could definitely buy a replacement with the payout.

While I'd much rather be without the experience, I was almost pleasantly surprised by the insurance company.

That’s what progressive did when our older car was totaled by hail. It wasn’t just Craigslist but it was some similar ones available- and averaged. They’d go buy one for us, or give us the cash, or (what we did) is give us back the car and most of the cash.

You may have been able to push for a better settlement if you saw their comps and noticed they were not actually comparable, but at the end of the day, no insurance company will give you more than local market value. If you're underwater on the loan and the value doesn't cover it, that's om you. I never buy GAP; if you need to buy GAP, you should be buying less car.

Yeah I really had no idea what powers/options I had in the situation. The way they treated me made me seriously want to somehow get them to recover a LOT of money I had to spend (around $4-6k in impound lot fees they wouldn't pay). They pretty much went out of their way to make me feel like I should be grateful they helped at all.

I was maybe 23 and definitely didn't have money for legal help. I hate how I let myself get treated.

Don’t beat yourself up over it. But also, post the learnings not just the mistake without the context only for both of them to come out later after people point them out.

GAP comes on leases too pretty standard these days.

You may have done some, but you can negotiate with the insurance company and either seek legal help or file a protest with the department of insurance if they are not in good faith servicing your claim.

It seems like the industry has some pretty strong incentives to standardize on the lowest possible values in those tables.

Further, what does “worth” mean if you can’t take the amount of money you were given and easily purchase a car of the same make, model, year, and condition?

Particularly when you add on them keeping your car and parting it out or whatever. I got screwed on that pretty hard... they "forgot" to document all the options and packages (my car was intact, generally, but totaled due to airbag deployments). Even tires (look, I am realistic, I don't expect that to account for much)... I'd just put new performance tires ($1,700) on them 400 miles prior (yay for the odometer reading on the receipt) and they weren't affected by the accident, but the adjuster looked at a scale of "New / Like New / Excellent / Good / Fair / Poor" and described them as in "Fair" condition. When I balked at that they upped the offer by $60, $15 a tire. If it wasn't for all the drama associated with it, I'd have bought the car back and parted it myself.

where do they get the data to publish in the industry standard tables?

I had a two year old Audi A4 totaled. I expected that I'd get about $24K for it (this was a couple of years ago). My insurer offered $19K. I asked to look at the comps, and sure enough, most of the comps were between $22K and $27K. Except one, from a shitty little dealer 150 miles away for $12,999. There was obviously something up, salvage title, or some other issue. But they shrugged. "Doesn't say so on the offer, so it's a valid comp".

My two cars now have new car replacement coverage for 5 years that also wraps in gap coverage.

It absolutely is a local craigslist lookup— I followed up with one of the dealerships USAA called (6 hours away from where we live, with all of four cars in their "lot") to clarify how their valuation was provided. They explained that Vanessa (the USAA agent) simply asked how much they would sell a VW TDI for if they were a VW dealership. The high-school aged secretary said she didn't really know, so agreed that whatever value Vanessa offered sounded reasonable. This was the value they were willing to pay when their drunk client smashed through my parked car in the middle of the night in his BMW on the way back from the opera. "Industry Standard published tables" must just be the title on the top of the sticky note from her calling around.

The whole thing was an absolutely miserable experience completely stacked against any sort of reasonable resolution, and USAA was caught in so many lies it still irritates me years later. I'm sad that this is so clearly a continual process for people day to day.

Lol, wild. Mine was also a drunk lady slamming into my parked car. I had absolutely nothing to do with the theft and accident at all. And I was treated that way. I was actually out drinking for my birthday and my car was parked (downtown where I lived) next to a bar my friend worked at and he called me.

where does the data in those “published tables” come from?