More damage found after insurance agreed to repair...

[jimxms]

To cut a long story short, I was in an accident. Got some quotes to repair the damage. An independent assessor came round and agreed one of my quotes.

My car is booked in to be repaired on Tuesday, and I'm away on holiday for a week at the same time.

However, when washing the car today I noticed that the accident has split the seal on one of my headlights causing condensation inside. I know my headlights will cost a fortune as they have the whole auto-leveling & HID thing going on.

So what should I do?

I'm worried that if I contact the insurance company they'll put a hold on the repair until they can get an assessor back out, which will really screw things up with getting my car repaired while on hols.

[papercup]

Send it in for repair and tell the bodyshop; they'll add it to the work to be done. The insurance company don't only agree to that original quote, its open-ended to allow for them finding other things (say when they take the bumper off and find more bent/broken things behind). The headlamp comes under that sort of thing.

This was my experience.

Andy

[jimxms]

Cheers Andy, that's reassuring.

[Deva Link]

I would expect an argument that the condensation isn't the result of the accident unless there are other signs of damage to the lamp - lots of car headlamps get condensation in them.

[jimxms]

I'm guessing that will be down to the garage to argue? As it'll really need to come out and photographed to show the damage.

Insurance are bound to moan though as they just signed off £1k for the repairs, and I know a new headlight is going to be another £300-400 on top of that