alex

I went through a similar thing about 2 years ago, but in Pittsburgh, not WA. 2003 Passat wagon, rear ended while stopped at a light, and the insurance company refused to total it, even though repairs plus rental car came close to 80% of book value, which appears to be about the same dollar amount as your repairs.

Take it to the shop of your choice, it’’s your car, not the insurance company’’s car. All the shops say that the car will be just as safe as before, but my wife was never very comfortable afterwards. It looked fine, after taking it back to the shop 3 times, and drove fine. We ended up trading it in towards a minivan when the 3rd child was near, and we probably got about $2k less than the non-damaged value, but PA does not allow you to make a claim on diminished value.

If you keep it, here are a few things to watch out for from the shop:
Make sure they reassemble the lock mechanism properly, the VW ones are more finicky than most.
Same with the window raising mechanism.
Check the alignment of the rear seats, our’’s were bent apart and it took the shop awhile to get them aligned.
Check the seatbelts, the driver’’s belt malfunctioned afterwards and needed to be replaced. I don”t know if it was the pretensioner, but I convinced the shop to replace all the belts that had been in use at the time.

I hated the whole process and the fact that we took such a large financial hit. Good luck in dealing with the shop and the insurance company.

alex

I agree w/Doug that you should be given the opportunity to take your car to your shop of choice, and/or to get multiple estimates on the repair cost!

What really sucks here is that, from the photo, it just looks like the rear bumper and hatch need to be replaced — when in fact the damage is much more invasive!

Just curious — what happened to the SUV?

A good body shop really can make it almost as good as new and not visible unless you are really looking inside the car. If it hasn”t already been seen by more than one shop (including some of your choosing), I would insist on that. I would also try to get the candidate shops to list out line by line what repairs and parts they will use. If you can, go with a shop that works on Mercedes/BMW/Porsche. They will know all the tricks for getting a German car back as close to new as possible. If you have the work done by such a shop, I don”t think there will be any cause for concern safety-wise.

Best wishes, Doug

At the same time I wouldn”t want to accept less than the book value of the car because that wouldn”t allow us to buy a comparable car. We also like having a diesel wagon, it fits our needs and gets great fuel economy. It’’s a fact that used ones go for close to $20k and new ones are usually selling for above MSRP right now.