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Not bike related.
Some one went into the back of the car behind my wife last night (a three car collision, she was at the front).
Details exchanged, police were involved etc. car was ok to drive home.
She's since had two text messages from different numbers saying "our client has admitted fault etc. phone us to sort it out". Can't find either number on google. One comes up as one number off AXA.
Scam or legit? We'll have to wait till Monday office hours to phone these companies on a recognised number we trust. Which is the sensible option.
Notified our insurance. But who do we claim off - out of the two cars behind? Worried that they will just pass the blame between them and slow things down. Would leaving that to our insurance be sensible or will we get stung?
Part 2 of this problem is that the car is old. Worth c. £2800 according to AutoTrader. The boot door has been reshaped but still works. The bumper has lots of stress marks, missing paint and and feel more flexible than before. We were already planning to go car shopping tomorrow (my wife is fairly annoyed that this happened after she spent 2 hours giving the car a good clean 😉 ). Is this likely to be a write off as a new bumper, fixing the boot and painting is going to be fairly expensive? That's assuming there is nothing unseen. A write off might actually be more convenient than waiting to get it fixed and then having to sell a car that's been in an accident in a few weeks.
Anyone got any experience similar to this and able to shed some light on what might actually happen. Its all a bit tedious and we're aren't going to get any compensation for the effort involved for us in sorting!
Apparently the cause of this was "trying to stifle a sneeze" ffs.
You claim off the one who hit yours, then they claim off the one behind them etc etc. I think you’re best off ignoring that message and just phone the person who hit your cars insurance directly and claim off them.
At that value of car past experience suggests it will likely be written off.
why not just phone your insurers and let them deal with it?
This.
Why would you do anything else?
No experience.
Would we end up paying excess. Does either option have more on impact on future premiums?
I claimed through my insurer last time I had my car written off by a third party because he wouldn’t give me his details, but otherwise there’s not much point in doing so. You can just claim directly off the third party and it makes it less complicated with respect to your excess as that isn’t covered by your own insurer.
I will add that it doesn’t matter what you do car insurance claims are messy, drawn out and you always lose out in some way, but you should get paid out pretty quickly it’s just the actual settling of blame etc and paperwork to give to future insurers to show ‘no fault’ that can take years.
it took nearly two years before mine was ‘settled’ with a letter to confirm that and it only involved me and one other car, although I would add that I was paid out in less than a week because they work on a pay now argue later basis.
The only time I've ever claimed, it was because someone had driven into me. I phoned my insurers and they dealt with it. My insurers said explicitly "do not speak to the other side.) However, the opposing insurers then contested lots of the details of the claim, cost of repairs and hire car etc (I had a nightmare with that, there was a thread!)
In hindsight, I should've let the other insurer deal with it all because they pay for it in the first instance, rather than your insurer paying and then claiming it back off the other side.
Claim from your insurance, that's what you pay it for. I never understand when people try and claim from a 3rd party's insurance.
Claim from your insurance, that's what you pay it for. I never understand when people try and claim from a 3rd party's insurance.
Because if you claim through your own you’ll have to pay your own excess then wait until the claim is settled before you can get it back, for some people their excess can be pretty high.
It also introduces another middle man to go through increasing the amount of admin.
It's an offence not to inform your insurer, so given they will therefore already know you have been involved in an accident, you might as well get your money out of them by letting them deal with it.
Yes, likely to be written off as the value of the parts and labour will exceed the threshold given the cars value. You could just buy it off them as part of the claim.
Yes I expect we'll lose out. Thankfully this is just a financial problem as no one was hurt.
I'll keep score on "my insurer" Vs "theirs" 😂
Useful stuff though so thanks for the comments and experience.
I don't want the car. We planned to go car shopping tomorrow as we've been looking at options for a few weeks.
I was tailgated about 3 years ago and MrsP was in the middle of a 3 car pile up a few years earlier (car drove in to her stationary car and pushed her into the stationary landy in front of her) *.
In both cases we just spoke to our insurance and they sorted absolutely everything out for us. We had several calls from random numbers claiming to be from the 3rd party insurers and every time we just told them to speak with our insurers. This is what you pay insurance for.
*In both cases we were on the same piece of road, but going in opposite directions.
No experience.
Would we end up paying excess. Does either option have more on impact on future premiums?
This is my experience (below)
Because if you claim through your own you’ll have to pay your own excess then wait until the claim is settled before you can get it back, for some people their excess can be pretty high.
It also introduces another middle man to go through increasing the amount of admin.
The "guilty" insurer will often offer to deal with it because they can control their costs, instead of paying for more expensive repairs plus additional admin to another insurer(s).
Make sure that any work is warrantied and that you don't get done for hire car costs, as opposed to courtesy car.
You must notify your own insurer regardless so check their view/pros/cons before deciding
You only speak to your insurance company. They do the work
Another “claim off your insurance company” voice here. You pay them the money, make them do some work for it.
+n. Aside from anything else, do you suppose that a third-party insurer is going to want to be acting in your best interests over their paying customer?
You deal with your insurer, they deal with theirs, the insurance companies deal with each other.
Having to pay an excess ahead of reclaiming it straight back again is a new one on me (though the time to think about that was back when you agreed to an excess in order to save £10/year on your premium). That said, it's a while since I last had to make a claim so this may be the way it is now.
Cougar makes a good point, you have a contract with your insurer, you have a small amount of leverage with them, can report them to the ombudsman for example. You don't have that with a third party's insurer so if they mess you around or the work is substandard it's much harder to sort out. You should also have legal cover through your insurance if things get messy.
It's counter intuative, but I've had best results going to the 3rd parties insurer*
They admitted 100% fault, and my insurance company was giving me the runaround - thay told me to contact some claims management company and were being really cagey about supplying a hire car, so I cancelled my claim with my insurer.
*It's cheaper for them, so it's in their interest to look after you, rather than fight over the inevitably inflated costs of battling the other insurance company - I had a brand new hire car of the same class as my 10yr old car ( a merc C-class) the same day, and when my car was declared an economic write off, they offered me an actual fair market price right off the bat, no negociation required, I kept the hire car until the cheque was cashed.