State Farm salvage title problem

What is the name of your state? Georgia/South Carolina

I currently live in Georgia but I originally purchased the vehicle in South Carolina.

In Feb. 2002 we purchased a 1996 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer edition. The vehicle was purchased from an individual that does body work. He originally bought the vehicle with prior damage and repaired it. His wife drove the vehicle for about a year before we bought it. He disclosed that it had been wrecked but he only had minor repairs to the front. The car was titled in his wife's name and had a clean SC title. I am not positive but I think we paid around $8,800 (it had a book value around $10,000).

We had the vehicle titled in my wife's name and again we had a clean SC title. We moved to Georgia in Sept 2002 and changed the registration to GA. My wife was issued a clean GA title for the vehicle.

Last month we received a letter from our state attorney general / state DMV that sometime after 1997 but before we obtained the vehicle, that our vehicle should have been branded with a salvage title. I researched online and found that State Farm had reached an agreement with the State Attorneys General for vehicles that should have branded titles. The total "pool" is for $40 million and the amount that I should receive as compensation should be $1400 based on a current NADA value of $5,400 (also could vary based on number of forms returned).

If I don't return the form (which also releases State Farm from any future legal action), my vehicle will still be branded as salvage but I won't receive any compensation. The forms must be in by Nov. 18th so I don't have much time to decide what to do.

I don't think I should have to settle for this amount. If State Farm had properly titled the vehilce as salvage, I would have never bought it. I would think that State Farm also profited from this as the vehicle would have brought more at auction with a clean title. I don't think it is right to base my compensation on current book value 3.5 years after I bought it.

HELP....should I take the money and shut up or do I have a legit chance to fight it?

tglocke said:

I don't think I should have to settle for this amount. If State Farm had properly titled the vehilce as salvage, I would have never bought it. I would think that State Farm also profited from this as the vehicle would have brought more at auction with a clean title. I don't think it is right to base my compensation on current book value 3.5 years after I bought it.

HELP....should I take the money and shut up or do I have a legit chance to fight it?

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Whether you take the offer (and settle) or not is entirely up to you. If you don't agree to the settlement, you can certainly spend a few thousand dollars in a lawsuit against them.

....and the $1400 is approximately the difference in value anyway. Either way, you are going to have a new branded title..right?

So take the money and keep the vehicle until it won't make any difference...which was about 2 years ago. A '96 Explorer can be bought for around $5000. The title isn't going to hurt that value since it has been driven for 8 years in its present condition. Take the $1400 and toward maintenance.

Salvage Title Info

I say don't take the money and talk to an autofraud attorney near you. Most take cases like this on a contingency fee so it doesn't cost you legal fees to get full compensation and in many cases what they are offering isn't nearly all that a consumer can lose when they have to "brand" their car title as salvage and try to sell it later. Don't bother talking to a lawyer that handles probate or traffic cases or accident cases. Autofraud, like Lemon Law, is a special area of the law. Many states have a consumer protection law that can give you the right to recover three times your actual damages and/or punitive damages too. To look for an autofraud lawyer in your state, click here. Locate Local Lemon Fraud Lawyers

To find out more about salvage titles and why the State Farm offer may not be your best bet, click here.Salvage Title Info

Lemon Lawyer said:

I say don't take the money and talk to an autofraud attorney near you. Most take cases like this on a contingency fee so it doesn't cost you legal fees to get full compensation and in many cases what they are offering isn't nearly all that a consumer can lose when they have to "brand" their car title as salvage and try to sell it later. Don't bother talking to a lawyer that handles probate or traffic cases or accident cases. Autofraud, like Lemon Law, is a special area of the law. Many states have a consumer protection law that can give you the right to recover three times your actual damages and/or punitive damages too. To look for an autofraud lawyer in your state, click here. Locate Local Lemon Fraud Lawyers

To find out more about salvage titles and why the State Farm offer may not be your best bet, click here.Salvage Title Info

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And if you follow this advice, you're going to end up out the $1400 plus lawyer's fees. This settlement was reached as part of a very large action ($40 million) so there's already a lot of history in what's going on. Take the $1400 and move on. If you don't take it now, you'll probably end up with at best the $1400, plus a lot of lawyer's fees, and at worst, just a lot of lawyer's fees.

Lemon Lawyer said:

I say don't take the money and talk to an autofraud attorney near you.

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Idiot!!

Most take cases like this on a contingency fee so it doesn't cost you legal fees to get full compensation and in many cases what they are offering isn't nearly all that a consumer can lose when they have to "brand" their car title as salvage and try to sell it later.

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Wrong again. There is very little chance of any 'real' attorney taking this case on contingent fee (correct terminology) as it has already been adjudicated in a class action. The chance of another attorney coming in and getting appreciably more (over the class settlement) is unlikely.

State Farm Salvage Title Ripoff

Wrong again. First, there was NO class action settlement. According to newspaper accounts, it all started in Indiana back in 1998 when a used Ford owner took his defective Ford in for repairs. The dealer did the work and turned in a warranty claim to Ford and Ford rejected the claim and said it'd been totalled out according to their records so there was no warranty coverage left. Turned out the vehicle was the first State Farm salvage vehicle discovered. The guy sued, won nicely, got his attorney fees paid and got an injunction (a court order) that State Farm was never to do it again. Well, guess what? They did anyway. Turns out they kept doing it pretty much all across the country. You see, if you brand a title as a salvage vehicle then it's practically worthless according to most car dealers. Don't believe me? You can check the net. Better yet, there's an easy way to find out. Take your own car to the used car dept of any car dealership and tell them you want to sell it. Give them any reason you like, moving out of town, going to Iraq, just want to buy something else and can't get any money for it...whatever. Find out what they'll give you to buy it from you. Okay, now tell them "oh, by the way, my title says this vehicle is a salvage car" and see what happens. Watch them run. Why? Easy. If they know the truth then they have to tell the truth when they sell it and no car dealer likes to do that...because they know that they won't be able to make any money off it. But back to state farm and wrecked salvage cars. So gradually different consumers scattered around the country find out that they've got a car that was wrecked and repaired and they weren't told when they bought it. Some of them get to an attorney who knows the disclosure laws on salvage and wrecked cars. They trace the title backwards (actually that's pretty easy to do) and bam! Up pops the name of an insurance company as an owner of the vehicle someplace in the title chain. Well, folks, there's only one basic reason that usually explains why an insurance company "buys" a car from someone ... they have to because the car is totalled out. Any autofraud attorney worth his salt knows that (but I'll grant you that a dui or probate attorney wouldn't know it). There was NO class action settlement with state farm. What happened was they obviously realized that the numbers were catching up with them and they figured out a way to at least keep all the state attorney generals from sueing them. Why? Because the state attorney generals are the ones who are supposed to enforce the state laws dealing with branding motor vehicle titles. Some of those laws (like in Ohio for instance) give the state attorney general the power to hit them for $25,000 PER CAR. Now I've heard that there's a thousand of these salvage vehicles in Ohio. Okay. Do the math. Now remember that there's 50 states plus the District of Columbia and several US territories. So what do they do? State Farm makes an offer. They offer to ante up money for each person who currently owns one of the vehicles, based on a sliding scale of the vehicle's present worth (forget about what you may have paid for it, which is how the law really measures your damages and what you are owed here under only one of the several laws that can apply), they figure $40 mil ought to cover it and just to sweeten the deal so the budget-conscious attorney generals will buy the deal, they promise to throw a million or so their way too. There aren't many politicians you can't buy for a million dollars, folks, and state attorney generals are really just politicians when you get right down to it. So what happens next? State Farm actually gives the state attorney generals the form letter language to use for the letters that they will send out to all the consumers who they are trying to sucker into their deal. So you see, folks, the state attorney generals get a couple of buckets of money to send out the form letters that State Farm has given them to use. To make sure it's hard to resist, State Farm hires a company to pay out the money so that the state attorney generals don't even have to monitor things and make sure the money really gets paid at all. This is the easiest money the state attorney generals ever got! No wonder they bought the deal. Mail some letters and collect your check...every politicians dream! But let's go one step further. State Farm then says the letters to consumers aren't to be mailed out for another 8 or 9 months; why? Well, a bunch more of those cars can end up in the junkyard by then and save some more money! Now, what's all this mean to you? Easy. If you paid $10,000 for your vehicle, then with a salvage brand it was probably worth no more than 1/3 to 40% of that...on a good day. Still not sure? Then go back to that car dealer again and find out for yourself. What's STate Farm paying you? Well, I know one gal who has been promised $1,800 or so. But don't stop with that number. EVERY STATE has a Unfair and Deceptive Acts law that you can use. Many of those laws say you have a right to get 3 times your damages, too. Now let's add fraud and the danger of punitive damages against the dealer you bought your car from and also against State Farm. What's fraud? Every state has its own definition of fraud but in practically every state fraud boils down to a lie, pure and simple, a lie that hurts you money-wise. Where's the fraud here? Well how about a permanent injunction that says don't do this and they go on and do it anyway? You think that's an accident, folks? It's all about money, plain and simple...and State Farm obviously wants to make and keep as much of it as they can. A lady called me today who got a letter from the state bureau of motor vehicles that told her her title was "blocked", which means she can't sell her car or anything until she gets herself a new title that says "SALVAGE" on it and she can't do that until she gets it inspected and pays $58 and then her new title will say it's a rebuilt salvage vehicle. Oh, they didn't tell you about having to pay to get a new title yet? Well, just wait, that letter's coming too. One other thing, that lady who had to pay to get a new title? Well her own insurance company cancelled her car insurance...because they don't insure salvage cars! So how did I find out all this? I did what you can do...check it out on the internet. Don't take my word for it...do your own homework. Don't take the easy money until you know the whole story. If that's what you decide, then fine, but don't just grab the easy money without knowing the whole story and the whole truth here. There's an old adage that we've all heard...if it sounds too good to be true then it really is too good to be true. And yes, there are Consumer Law attorneys out there who know how to do something about this salvage title ripoff and who will take cases like this on a contingency fee. And yes, I am one of them. the National Association of Consumer Advocates.NACA St Louis Dispatch What's a Salvage Car Worth?

WOW.... you flunked English, didn't you??