Car Insurance Claim Query / Protocol

[DSLiverpool]

So in this thread http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Guy hits my door but no cctv and no witness`s, after 2 weeks faffing about he wont pay for the damage so I call to claim.
I am told it would probably be settled as a knock for knock, I said no he hit my rear door I want you to go after him.
So to do this I have to pay for my excess (£550) and they will look at reclaiming it but with little appetite as they are not really out of pocket, the damage is £400 to fix so I asked them to leave it whilst I thought about it.
Part of me cant be bothered claiming to pay more than a normal repair and part of me doesnt want the guy to get away with hitting me.

I need the guidance of the experienced please. Would they get my £550 back ?

[Countdown]

Bad luck

Personally I'd pay the £400 and take it on the chin. better than paying £550 and having a claim on your record....

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

I had EXACTLY the same happen to me, my car was parked in a car park, mouth breather admitted liability on the day, then reneged two weeks later.

I was faced with exactly the same dilemma as you, for a similar amount of repair cost. My insurance company told me the same, so in the end to avoid a claim showing up I just repaired the damage myself.

But here's the kicker - because I called my insurance company up and asked how to proceed, despite the fact that I never went ahead with a claim, the buggers STILL recorded it and it is on my record now, and has come up when renewing both my car and bike insurance, and cost me an extra 50 quid in policy price. Rage!!!

I had a huge row with them, but they refused to delete it - insisting that regardless of whether I made a claim or not, the incident still happened.

I bet that it's on your record now too - you should check!!!

[KevinCamaroSS]

Why would you lose £550 if the repair cost £400? You would only lose £400, since that is all the claim cost.

[herewego]

Maybe the guy wants to go through insurance because he wants to add on a whiplash claim.

[Fastpedeller]

Ray Luxury-Yacht said:

I had EXACTLY the same happen to me, my car was parked in a car park, mouth breather admitted liability on the day, then reneged two weeks later.

I was faced with exactly the same dilemma as you, for a similar amount of repair cost. My insurance company told me the same, so in the end to avoid a claim showing up I just repaired the damage myself.

But here's the kicker - because I called my insurance company up and asked how to proceed, despite the fact that I never went ahead with a claim, the buggers STILL recorded it and it is on my record now, and has come up when renewing both my car and bike insurance, and cost me an extra 50 quid in policy price. Rage!!!

I had a huge row with them, but they refused to delete it - insisting that regardless of whether I made a claim or not, the incident still happened.

I bet that it's on your record now too - you should check!!!

Maybe a daft question (but I am being genuine, not tolling).. what justification do they have for a car claim impacting on your bike insurance?

[Crispynotes]

DSLiverpool said:

So in this thread http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Guy hits my door but no cctv and no witness`s, after 2 weeks faffing about he wont pay for the damage so I call to claim.
I am told it would probably be settled as a knock for knock, I said no he hit my rear door I want you to go after him.
So to do this I have to pay for my excess (£550) and they will look at reclaiming it but with little appetite as they are not really out of pocket, the damage is £400 to fix so I asked them to leave it whilst I thought about it.
Part of me cant be bothered claiming to pay more than a normal repair and part of me doesnt want the guy to get away with hitting me.

I need the guidance of the experienced please. Would they get my £550 back ?

Your best contacting the third party's insurance company to notify them as your own insurer would of recorded this against your policy, advise the TPI that you hold their insured responsible, provide them the reasons why and either send them photos of the damage with a quote for repair or invoice. Wait for them to respond, your own insurer is not obliged to recover any excess or even attempt a recovery the choice is entirely up to them.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Fastpedeller said:

Maybe a daft question (but I am being genuine, not tolling).. what justification do they have for a car claim impacting on your bike insurance?

If you lost it on a bend in your car, you're probably more likely to do the same on your bike than another biker who has never claimed on his car.

If you have your car vandalised or stolen outside your house, again, probably more likely to suffer the same on your bike than someone who has never had a car vandalised.

[KungFuPanda]

If you don't want to claim from your own insurance, go to a claims company or go through your own legal expenses insurer if you have any. This will be the real test as they will only take a claim on if they think they have a better than 50% chance of successfully pursuing a claim. They probably won't be interested fro £400 worth of damage as it'll fall into the Small Claims Track where they won't be able to recover costs.

To test your convictions, why don't you bring your own claim for the damage to your vehicle. Start a Small Claim on MCOL and see what happens. From your accident circumstances, personally I reckon it'll be split liability i.e. 50-50.

Ps, knock for knock only applies to insurers outlays where they agree to absorb their own losses. It's nothing to do with liability.

[Fastpedeller]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Fastpedeller said:

Maybe a daft question (but I am being genuine, not tolling).. what justification do they have for a car claim impacting on your bike insurance?

If you lost it on a bend in your car, you're probably more likely to do the same on your bike than another biker who has never claimed on his car.

If you have your car vandalised or stolen outside your house, again, probably more likely to suffer the same on your bike than someone who has never had a car vandalised.

That's a tenuous link though isn't it? If a car drives into you when you are on your bike, are they still likely to drive into you when you are in your car? Some of the excuses for premium loading beggar belief!

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Fastpedeller said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Fastpedeller said:

Maybe a daft question (but I am being genuine, not tolling).. what justification do they have for a car claim impacting on your bike insurance?

If you lost it on a bend in your car, you're probably more likely to do the same on your bike than another biker who has never claimed on his car.

If you have your car vandalised or stolen outside your house, again, probably more likely to suffer the same on your bike than someone who has never had a car vandalised.

That's a tenuous link though isn't it? If a car drives into you when you are on your bike, are they still likely to drive into you when you are in your car? Some of the excuses for premium loading beggar belief!

If say it happened at a notorious roundabout, then it shows that you use that route. If you take 100 non fault claims, 95 may be totally random, but 5 might indicate an increased future risk. Hence some insurers have stats that show a link between non fault claims and future claims.

[DSLiverpool]

My excess is £550, cash fix is £400, insurance fix probably £600

I understand knock for knock meaning each insurance company pays its own but I suffer as I get a black mark

I 100% dont have a marker on my policy for the none claim - I called back to check and a different person looked at it

Claims company only interested if I am injured and I am not (I have one in the next door office)

Going to suck it up as its a 10 year old Outback, may be different if it was a lease car etc

[Rick101]

You've already notified them of an incident. Might as well claim now.

[Blue Oval84]

Rick101 said:

You've already notified them of an incident. Might as well claim now.

Agreed, it's worth a bash as it's on your record and will need declaring for 3 to 5 years regardless.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

DSLiverpool said:

I understand knock for knock meaning each insurance company pays its own but I suffer as I get a black mark

Knock for knock hasn't existed for about 25 years. They mean 50/50, so your insurer pays half of his damge and his insurer pays half of yours. Which means you'll be able to claim back half your excess.

[Rick101]

Prob not thinking clearly but why dont they just split the total cost 50/50?
Is it not essentially the same?

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Rick101 said:

Prob not thinking clearly but why dont they just split the total cost 50/50?
Is it not essentially the same?

Not really. Fiesta & Ferrari collide down country lane. Both equally to blame. Under knock for knock, Fiesta insurer pays £1000 to fix Fiesta bonnet, plus driver pays his excess (say £100), and Ferrari insurer pays £15K to fix Ferrari bonnet, plus driver pays his excess (say £1000).

Under 50/50, Fiesta insurer pays £1000 to fix Fiesta and recovers £500 from Ferrari insurer, and Fiesta driver recovers £50 of his £100 x/s from Ferrari insurer. Ferrari insurer pays £15K to fix Ferrari, recovers £7500 from Fiesta insurer, and Ferrari driver recovers £500 of his £1000 x/s from Fiesta insurer.

50/50 is a fairer resolution, and better for punters and they both only pay half their excesses as each was only 50% to blame.

[Aretnap]

Rick101 said:

Prob not thinking clearly but why dont they just split the total cost 50/50?
Is it not essentially the same?

If you mean 50/50, that's what they do - each insurer pays for 50% of the total (insured) costs, because each driver was equally responsible for the accident (or because there wasn't enough evidence to determine who was responsible).

Knock for knock was a now defunct agreement between insurance companies to keep their legal costs down by not attempting to recover costs from each other, regardless of blame. The thinking being that if insurer A and insurer B have roughly similar types of client, then in an accident between drivers insured by the two companies, insurer A's driver will be responsible about as often as insurer B's drivers. So they'll expend a lot of time and money arguing about blame for individual accidents - and at the end of the year insurer A will send insurer B a cheque for (say) £1million, and insurer B will send one back for roughly the same sum. So they might as well save themselves the effort, and not bother arguing about blame at all, and just pay for their own repairs.

The difference between the two types of settlement becomes clear if you imagine a collision between you in a Ford Focus and someone else in a Ferrari in which both cars are written off. Under knock for knock your insurer is paying for a new Focus. Under a 50:50 settlement your insurer is paying for half a Ford Focus and half a Ferrari.

That's part of the reason why the knock for knock agreements broke down - if you're an insurer who insures a lot of Ferraris and not so many Focuses then a knock for knock agreement doesn't sound too appealing. Likewise if you insure mainly middle aged drivers with good records and steer clear of young drivers/those who've had a lot of accidents then the logic that it's just as likely to be your driver to blame as the other insurer's breaks down.

(I see Twig types faster than me)

[Rick101]

Splitting the total cost differs from what twig posted above then? Works out fairly similar in this example but I'm sure there are situations where one will end up much better off.

As I understand twigs post

Fiesta damage 1k
Fiesta insurer 450
Insureds excess 50
Ferrari insurer 500

Ferrari damage 15k
Ferrari insurer 7000
Insureds excess 500
Fiesta insurer 7500

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Rick101 said:

Splitting the total cost differs from what twig posted above then? Works out fairly similar in this example but I'm sure there are situations where one will end up much better off.

As I understand twigs post

Fiesta damage 1k
Fiesta insurer 450
Insureds excess 50
Ferrari insurer 500

Ferrari damage 15k
Ferrari insurer 7000
Insureds excess 500
Fiesta insurer 7000

Fiesta insurer would pay £7500 in total. Because client would pay £1000 x/s initially leaving £14K repair bill paid 50/50 at £7K each but get £500 back from Fiesta insurer. But Aretnap and I are basically saying the same thing.

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Thursday 22 December 11:15