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My daughter’s car was in a collision with another car. The other driver has accepted full responsibility and the other driver’s insurance company has offered to deal directly with my daughter. Is this a thing? Anything to be wary of?
cheers.
Yes it’s a thing, they’ll be wanting to sort it as quick as possible and at the minimum cost to them. By that I don’t mean a bad job, but to minimise loan car costs they’ll typically get things done quicker if possible. They’ll also not go via one of the rip off hire/lease car companies that effectively rent you the car at a daft monthly cost.
Yes, it's normal and reduces their costs.
She needs to tell her insurer.
She needs to make sure that she gets a repair, replacement car, etc that's at least as good as her own insurer would offer. Be careful to get that in writing, she doesn't have a written agreement with the other company
My neighbour wanged my 6month old car, and his very dodgy insurer (he kept dingiing thinhs so suspect it was the best he could get) wanted to deal direct and use their generic body shop.as it was a big repair I insisted on using my insurer and the body shop of my preference.
So make sure your daughter doesn't get short-changed
Having a collision and making a claim are two different things.
She has to notify her insurer anyway, having a crash affects their assessment of her risk profile and the cost impact on her premiums would be negligible compared to having to declare that you'd had insurance cancelled or declined because of withholding information from the insurer.
So, tell her insurer asap as the policy will say somewhere, tell them the other party wants to sort directly and let them sort it out. That's what you pay them for and don't as others have said get fobbed off by either Ins Co into a claims management company. These used to be a massive rip-off, a lot has been written about them since not least on here but also by Martin Lewis et al, so the 'used to be' is just in case that has caused them to clean up their act. Hmmm.....
She has no duty to be 'nice' to the other driver, her duty is to making sure she gets the best treatment and outcome. Hope she's OK, assuming she's quite young as Dad's helping to stuff out; even if not a big crash, my daughter was quite shaken up when she had one about how easily a lapse in concentration can go wrong - in her case it was a bit 50/50 - and to realise you can do absolutely nothing wrong and still end up in a pile of twisted metal because of the actions of others can be quite unsettling.
