Insurance advice: Write-off catagories

Q. Early on in the year I had a bit of a spill. My bike was taken to the dealer I bought it from and the insurance assessor wrote it off, apparently because it would cost more to repair than the value of the bike.

My insurance company paid me out promptly so I was quite happy.

A few months later I got a call from Datatag asking me if I had any problems with someone else using my Datatag number, which I didn’t. Do they use the security number again once a bike has been written off or would the bike be back on the road? I was quite surprised when I got the letter.
Greg Ridley, e-mail

A. There are four classes of write-off: a class A has to be destroyed with a certificate proving this has been done; a class B can be broken up and the parts used as spares; a class C is a bike that is worth so little that it is uneconomical to repair; a class D write-off is a bike that would have been uneconomical for an insurer to repair with new parts and paying full labour rates, but which you can repair economically yourself with used spares.

It sounds like your bike was a class D write off and it¹s been put back on the road perfectly legally, and Datatag are just double-checking the new owner is entitled to use their security marking.

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