Broken Car windscreen – again

So about 10 months ago something cracked my windscreen, first time in near 30 years of driving, and now it has happened again, some car in front hit a pothole and up bounced said stone to ruin my day.

Will in the insurance company pay up or will I have to fork out near £500 for a new one myself?

no reason the insurance company won’t pay out as long as you have windscreen cover.

Be careful if you claimed for the last replacement screen, most insurers have a clause about a maximum of 2 glass claims in 3 years. I’m in the same situation, new screen back in June last year and the replacement cracked in January. Getting this one done myself as I can choose to have a decent quality one instead of the Chinese Fuyao one fitted (it’s got more scratches and tiny chips in it than the original did in 9 years!) and to keep my claims history down as I got rear-ended March last year too.

Seemed to go through with no issues and I cannot find a limited number of claims for a windscreen so all ok. I think…

Not surprised you have broken the replacement.

Ime the insurance replaced glass is nothing like as high quality as the OEM fitment.

Confirmed by the auto glass  repairing my mates classic RS screen who was desperately trying to keep it numbers matching or at least have an OEM screen fitting -he would have had to pay for that. Insurance wouldn’t replace with OEM from Ford.

“Ime the insurance replaced glass is nothing like as high quality as the OEM fitment”

Screens are thinner, roads are worse and tipper drivers seem quite happy dropping gravel as they drive..

It’s more likely the windscreen company. One of them took a few goes at fitting a screen.
First dodgy Chinese screen had a distortion, right in eyeline. The 2nd, the heated screen element was faulty.
The fitter was properly cheesed off because a Transit Connect is a bit of a ball ache to do apparently. He was moaning about the poor quality screens his firm was buying and the number of defects.
The next one was a Pilkington which unfortunately only lasted one day before a a bit of 20mm gravel put a hole in it.

I had a window fitter come in looking a bit sheepish. I’d parked my Transit inside a warm warehouse and he was made up that he had a dry place to work in winter. Until the huge screen broke under its own weight during fitting and scratched the bonnet!

i think windscreens are viewed as a properly random event and previous claims generally don’t count against you (unlike other items where if you make a claim you are statistically more likely to claim in the future).  However, this is insurance and they’ll take any chance they can to make it cost you.  Having had to replace a windscreen recently after the most minor of chips rapidly became an alarming crack, speaking to the fitter he said one of the problems of modern cars is that they are much stiffer and the screens are effectively more brittle (i know, it is glass) so they are more vulnerable to even the smallest of impacts.

Best thing to do is get any cracks or chips repaired ASAP…it’s usually covered under most insurance and won’t affect your premium.

Presumably the reason they are so ‘generous’ is it’s much cheaper to fix a tiny chip/crack than it is to replace the entire screen.

So on balance, just get it fixed, on most occasions it won’t cost you any more time than a phone call and arrange a mobile guy to come out and basically glue it up.

The alternative is the windscreen eventualy pops at 80mph on the motorway, and then the insurance company is looking at a multi-car pile up, and possibly several fatalities rather than a quick squirt of glue.

The alternative is the windscreen eventualy pops at 80mph on the motorway, and then the insurance company is looking at a multi-car pile up, and possibly several fatalities rather than a quick squirt of glue.

I’m a little let down by the result of the  chip in my window then (as a direct result of gravel falling off a tipper going the other direction)

Later that day I went through a pothole at about 18mph near loch of garten and my screen split top to bottom. No pile ups were involved -cars or birds.

Only problem i ever had with a windscreen claim as an insurance claims handler was the omission on the Autoglass invoice that the thing that broke the windscreen was a pedestrian.