I don’t know if a 3rd party insurance company is ‘allowed’ to write off a car without your agreement? They have no claim to it unlike if you were claiming through your own insurance. Or perhaps you have the right to buy it off them…

This.

They need to put right the damage caused by their client, doesn’t matter if it costs ten times more than the cars value…

No not this at all. Please ignore this advice, it’s misleading, and just plain wrong in all sorts of ways.

You have a common law duty to mitigate your losses, ie keep them to a reasonable minimum. In law, you are also entitled to be put back in the position you were in prior to the accident.

The “tests” for these, are that, if your car was say, worth £1000, and the repairs are say £900, and the “salvage value” of the remains are say £200, then the car is not repairable. You get £1000, the insurer disposes of the remains and recovers £200. Total cost £800. The alternative is to spend £900, which is a greater sum, thus not keeping losses to a minimum.

Common sense says it has to be this way. Firstly, dependent on the damage, you might not even be allowed to keep the remains. When a car is declared a total loss, it is generally graded A,B,C, or D (sometimes known as x).

A the remains MUST be crushed, by law, as they are. Typically this applies to cars which have been stolen and burnt out, or other heavily fire damaged cars. They generally have a nil salvage value, but must be disposed of by a licenced salvage agent.

B is where the inspecting engineer believes there has been significant distortion to the bodyshell, and the vehicle may only be broken for parts. The shell must be crushed, by a licenced salvage agent. Little salvage value, typically 5%.

C is the more common, generally, where the cost of repairs outweigh the cost of repair. Your car is likely to be this. You may keep this, but it could be subject to a vehicle inspection check, fresh mot, and may not get comprehensive cover til you can prove you put value back into the vehicle, ie repairs.

D Is a curious one, where the car IS repairable, but if it were broken for parts the remains would fetch more than the repaired car. For example, an older car with hard to source parts, like say a Porsche 944, might be worth £2000, but with a rear window alone possibly being £500, it’s cheaper to pay out the total loss.

The law suggests you are “back into the position prior to the accident, when you receive either a repaired vehicle back, funds to repair, or the value of the total lossed vehicle. It has to be this way, otherwise people would take 6 months to find a like for like replacement vehicle and try to claim hire charges or loss of use for all this time. Basically the law treats your car as a asset of value, and its when you are back with that asset value, you are back in equity.

Its not the “insurance company” as such total lossing your vehicle, but a qualified motor vehicle engineer, often independent, who are assessing the value of the vehicle. Particularly independents, they have a duty to write their reports not for you, or the insurer, but as an expert instructed to write a report for the court. If he says its a total loss, then that’s his expert opinion. You can of course challenge it, like you can your Dr, but his opinion initally carries the weight. If it can’t go back on the road, as cat a or b, it cant, no matter what you or your insurer desire. And it shouldn’t make a difference if its your insurer or the third party insurer.

At the risk of sounding obtuse, why?

Most bike boots will have such a rigid sole, that they shouldn’t be a great boot to wear day in day out. Particularly if you’re going for something with good ankle protection which won’t allow the ankle to more too much and is reasonably tight to the calf.

If you compromise on the side of comfort for wearing during the day, you compromise on the safety. Compromise on the comfort, given you’ll be in them for say 12 hours including lunchtime, commute in/out, especially on wet days, they’ll be hellish, and you’ll also wear out expensive boots quite quickly.

And if you get “Rocksmith 2014”, then using the cable supplied, you end up with a game that works as a learning tool, and can use the pc without any other software/interfaces, to get started, to keep costs down.

But yeah, go to a decent guitar shop to find a bass.

Ok, I must declare a vested interest – in so much as I work for Direct Line, in an injury department, and right behind me are the “direct injury claims team”. (I work where people are already represented).

Firstly, whilst you should tell your own insurers for good form, eventually, I can’t see there is any problem dealing directly with Direct Line what so ever. (actually, as I’ve claimed against them myself twice in the last few years I’ve sampled the service!)

Indeed, you might find that you’re less likely to run into issues so any services provided by them such as repairs, hire cars, physio treatment, are costs they authorise up front.

For example, if you go to your own insurer, and they simply punt you on to an accident management company to provide a credit repair, credit hire, and credit physio, you’re taking some risk in essentially funding your claim, by taking out complex credit agreements and hoping to recover it in full later. The AMC will of course both have hire/physio/repair suppliers who will charge you far more (on credit terms) than Direct Line can get those for you, and as mentioned, Direct Line do so at their own cost, not yours.

There are many problems that can occur with an insurance claim – such as – if your repairs take a long time, due to say a parts delay, Direct Line if they have authorised hire, are stuck with keeping you in hire till it arrives, whereas your AMC might either get nervous about the mounting bill and it’s recovery, and pull the hire. Or you might just find your repairs are delayed anyway – where an AMC is making extra cash from say the hire car provision, your car will typically not enter a garage til a thursday, it won’t be inspected til a monday and thus by the time repairs authorised and parts ordered, it’s been a week already, just to bump up the total claim costs. For example, the repair labour rate might only be £500, but they could depending on the hire car, be earning £200 a day from that credit hire, for which you’ve signed up the risk for, as its credit, whereas the car from Direct Line is just that.

If your injuries are straight forward, then Direct Line can and will organise prompt investigations/treatment, but if it looks like your injuries might be more complex, they will quickly tell you to go to solicitors so your best interests are looked after.

Also, you go to a solicitor for your injury, then you might lose 25% of the value of your injury to the solicitors in “success fees”.

Basically it’s up to you, but there’s in my view (and I work for the company, but also need to bear in mind I don’t want to look like an arse on a public forum if they were rubbish!) that there’s probably less risk to you to use them. speak to them, see what they say, and if you don’t like what you hear, then that’s your choice.

And bear in mind on any post like this, there will always be a handful of people saying oh, I did this, and x were totally rubbish, but in fairness, you’re dealing with an organisation that deals with tens of thousands of claims a year.

I must admit, even 10-15 years ago, I’d not have recommended using them. But the world has moved on. They are very big with “treating the customer fairly” and are very sensitive to the fact you have other options open to you.

I think if you can tell the difference between “drunk” and “not quite right regardless of the amount she’s had to drink”, knowing the person, then medical attention is in order. She may have been wrongly targetted,or unlucky, but seriously even as a male, I can tell you that a spiked drink really screws up a girl in a way being just “drunk” doesn’t do.

One friend of a friend (admittedly its tenuous, I’ve not met her) was raped after a spiked drink, and it’s really messed with her mind since.

£700. For a rather vulgar casio. Designed so it matches the buttons on your Barbour presumably?

I’m out…..

Don’t know, but it’s a fantastic name for a band! I’m having it!

That genuinely impressed me, as a man who’s first significant bit of BMX “hurt” was age 14 going over a table top, missing the other side and landing more or less of the flat, flat from 6feet up on the saddle with a feet off pedals landing…………

A Liberty print in Tana Lawn.

650b wheelsize.

So even if you get cctv from the petrol station, you think you can interest the police in a stolen bike, in Glasgow?

The police are like any shitty company with a government given monopoly these days. (Think railways) You can’t dispute the charges (in our council tax) but you can expect to be fobbed of with any crime less than murder or hate/internet name calling.

My bike got nicked, from right under a cctv camera, in full daylight. I couldn’t even get the police to bother asking the council for the footage, let alone find a couple of minutes of fast forward rewind action to see if they could at least identify the thief. Same when my motorbike was in a “hit and run”, again right under a recording cctv camera, where all they did was issue me with a producer, or my phone which was pickpocketed on a bus. I could track it’s theft on the net, and could have identifed the thief. I even toldthem where and when they’d find him and how to identify him, and did they do anything?

If you do the spadework yourself, they just get arsy you have shown how easy much of their work really is, if only they could be bothered. And if you can’t do the spadework, they assume you won’t know just how much crime they could clear up if they could be arsed, and fob you off anyway. And couple of these examples are pre budget cuts.

Most hilariously, when my car was stolen, they refused to give me the identity of the thief, citing DPA. (They lied to me over this, they were obliged to give it to me for a civil action). They also suggested, assigning an arbitary value to it, that it was “low value” and thus unimportant to them, and essentially, that if the thief had it, there was nothing they could do. No back story about finance or keepers, a salvage agent just towed it away as they fancied it. And the agent said “someone, whos name he couldn’t remember, who’s number he didn’t keep, and who’s address he never had, who he didn’t actually meet and who didn’t have any paperwork, just said he could have my car!” And the police couldn’t find any holes in that story. That was for a £3k MX5, so your chances of interesting plod in a kids pushbike is the square root of sod all.

Only significant use the police have these days is to dish out crime references for the insurance industry. If only there was an alternative….. I’d actually pay for a private police service if I had the option, as I think uselessness is actually culturally built in. They have such power and lack of accountability, they don’t need to be very good at their jobs, and as a “public servant” expect a level of respect they gave up the right to years ago.

And the saddest thing. I know several police officers. I am sure that apart from the planks I’ve dealt with, the overall ability and honesty of the police has never been higher. But the management appears broken from end to end.

Rant over. Sorry about the lack of swearing, caps lock, and excessive use of punctuation, it’s a pretty poor effort to be honest.

Some people appear completely unrealistic and missing the point.

Your bike has a value. You lost that value. They provide funds to give you back that value. That was your loss. No more, No less. You lost a bike worth say £1500 (and not the £4k new) you get £1500. Now, how about all those people who “scooped a bargain”,ie picked up a bike for say £1k on ebay, that was really worth £1500. And it gets stolen. Is paying you £500 less than it’s true worth, just because thats somehow related to what you paid, and not its market replacement cost, really fair?

To the OP, ignore all the daft nonsense here about what people “would or wouldnt accept” such as replacement bikes to exact spec. If you “refuse”, they’re not going to change their mind. All you can do is go to Court to try and compell them to comply with your wishes. But regrettably it would take a most barmy judge to find for you, as well worn and laid down principles will guide his judgement, such as “it was worth x, they offered you x, so you can replace it” and find against you.

Or to extrapolate further – your auntie dies and you “inherit” her car. It gets stolen. If the insurer rang you and said “well, you paid nothing for it, so we’re paying you nothing” really on? Or is it the “replacement” value. No one can make Aunties vintage Morris Minor which had the rosy glow of sentimental feelings come back, but you can be given a cash sum to get another Morris Minor as close to Aunties as you can find.

Already explained,many things are not “directly” replacable,which is why your loss is generally a cash value of the loss. No one is required to “replace” an item with another. As stated – you can’t “replace” items which are unique or one off items.

And to all those that somehow instead of sending you a cheque, the insurer should somehow be obliged to “go shopping” for you, can you not see how impractical that idea is. Or more to the point, if you want to quadruple claims staff, claims costs, and therefore premiums, go ahead, because ultimately people will have to pay for the service of surfing ebay for tatty old bikes. And if they did, people would complain that they’d rather have the money anyway to spend it on what they want!

OK, think about it logically. Let’s say you broke your arm. No insurer can give you a new arm, so you get a money value, as the law recognises that “to be put back into the position of the loss” is both desired, but often impractical. So your bike is valued, and you get that value. If you had a 20 year old bike,worth £100 new (RPI now being say £170) you’d not expect a new one, would you? You get a parcel of cash that financially puts you back where you were. Your argument about the bike is the same as some irreplaceable item of heirloom, a specific optioned car, or your radius! Just because you can’t replace it practicably,you can at least go forth and have a similar asset of the same value.

Does it usually take 18 years to get to Captain on short haul? (No disrespect, it’s a great achievement, I was wondering if there was any element of sexism, or if career breaks for kids had anything to do with it?)

Not trolling, just curious – but why would anyone buy a bike without trying it first just because of it’s spec list? Computers I understand – but the joy of buying a bike is that they are all different, and inevitably, the one you “click” with, isn’t the one you set out to buy.

Intrigued by this – I looked at the cost of these camper things –

A modern kombi from Brazil Ebay – about £6k. Cost to you from an unofficial UK dealer – £18k! (min) It can’t cost 12k to get one shipped and ready for the UK roads can it?

And isn’t that the more sensible option if you want old style, but with some element of reliability?

Nobody really has “problems with the bank”. What they have is problems with the amount of money in their account at the bank.

Next week is unlikely to see them with “fewer problems with the bank”.

Isn’t the point that owning a cat is not an unreasonable thing – we’ve been living with them for 10k years. They don’t bark or tend to attack the postmen like even a dog.

People get a lot of pleasure out of cat owning. Kids learn from owning a living creature, and it’s not cruel in the way having a flightless bird or trapped mammal could be percieved to be.

So we all have to get along, on this overcrowded corner of the planet. Talk to the neighbours – and remeber your hate of their cat is probably matched by their hate of you starting your car at 5:3oam to go to work, or your kids noiseon the garden – its about living alongside each other and realising we all impact on each other in a tiny way – I don’t play my guitar through an amp in my flat out of respect, and if they were making a noise, I feel I could ask my neighbours to be quieter too.

The thing about the Croydon cat issue, is that you have to particularly cold and psychopathic, and sooner or later, when the thrill goes from cat murder, a child may be next…..

It’s just an inferiority complex, chip on shoulder, call it what you wish, but Scotland and Wales simply hate the English as that sort of narrow minded xenophobic “hate” appears permissible when you dress it up as a “regional nationality”.

The truth is, the English don’t really have the counter distinction, we view them as one might an annoying little sister. We even quite like them, and would cheer for them in sports.And that’s what makes the Scots and Welsh so mad, that the English view them far more paternally, and that largely, the hate is one way traffic. It makes them feel patronised, peevish, and powerless, that they can’t make the English despise them, no matter how badly they try to make us.

I can’t believe people don’t know how to stage their own break down to avoid going! Are modern cars so rubbish you can’t stop them with a neat removal of some small, easily replaced part?

I note Rusty mentioned a Linn Axis. Good shout – a very nice TT for the money.

I started off with a Revolver, which was good. Upgraded to an Linn Axis, which was better, before finally a LP12, which was and remains, better still .

Each step gets improvements – You “discover” an addtional octave of bass, or that the stereo “separation” improves so you can shut your eyes and visualise a “soundstage”, and that the more you spend, the more “realistic” the instruments tend to be, and how they seperate out and are easier to follow, despite the overall sound being quantifiably better.

It really is worth listening to a couple, and hearing what you’re buying before you spend. you might “discover” you enjoy your vinyl more than you anticipated…..

26 here.

I’ve been on the cusp of a new bike for a couple of years since the last one got stolen (an Orange g2, which replaced the one which was stolen before, (a P7)which I found and got back from ebay, whilst looking for the most recently stolen one!)

And 650b made me realise that so much mtb “development” is bullshit for most of us. So it actually put me off buying new all together, and I am back on the 15 year old P7!

I reckon 650b has put of as many buyers as it’s won. I don’t think many people are “upgrading” to 650b, rather it’s coincidental to upgrading the bike they owned.

But it is mysterious how quickly an obsolete wheel size, only fractionally different to what it replaced, picked up manufacturer support, especially when it also became clear riders didn’t by and large want 29 as a mainstream size.

I actually feel really ripped off by theMTB industry, in a way that road bikes dont appear to rip of their purchasers with a new standard every few months to make old bikes “obsolete”.

Make me a 26. Give it 1/18, and 135mm rear hub on a 9mm qr please. And no silly seatpost sizes please.

Budget? Matching kit?

Generally you can’t go far wrong with anything by Rega at sensible money.

Presently enjoying “Look who’s Back”.

Hitler wakes up, on a patch of wasteland in 2011. Exeryone assumes he’s an alternative comedian, and starts to build a following……

Ikea one here – works ok – Do sometimes get a sort of “skin” left in there, but tbh, for £4, my list of first world problems puts this quite a long way down the list.

Of course, for balance, there’s no telling how many lives have been saved from the flame retardant benefits of asbestos. I bet it’s far and away higher than lives lost through asbestos related disease.

And from my understanding, yes a single exposure to an asbestos fibre “could” be enough to give rise to pleural plaques, which are in themselves not dangerous, and less likely, methosliomia, in much the same was as a single benzene ring could give you lung cancer, from your first ever cigarette. But in repeated exposure to both, your risk soars. The analagy to winning the lottery isn’t totally unreasonable. You could win with one ticket. But with 1000, your chances are so much better.

Ergot?

Traces back to the Egyptians, through to the middle ages and up to the 1930’s?

Well, when I bought my first proper mtb in 96, it was a C16. It wa head and shoulders better than the other bikes in the shop (Specialised Rockhopper, Marin’s Various). I was sold on it’s ridability. When it was stolen, I didn’t hesitate to replace with a P7, having tried various others, including (from another shop) various Kona and more Specialised.

To me, Orange were about decent steel frames, done right – before even that awful X1 they released.

I’d be in the market for one of their Pure7/P7’s now if I was looking. I had a G2 for a bit when the last p7 was stolen, and, you know, it was alright, but it wasn’t a Steel Orange, regardless of where it came from. Even the dealer told me to buy a Whyte instead!

Don’t get hung up on the filing cabinets, there’s more to Orange than them Fives. Well, there was.

Bt23’s were great on my SV650. Probably a similar weight and performance to a NC700?

You already probably are much cooler than me. I’m the least cool person I ever saw. Thats the point. I don’t care about being cool. But to have shirts that are up to a couple of decades old, that the pattern still really pleases me, that the fit is still good on (ie not subject to the vagaries of fashion) is worth more than a shirt a few quid less that ends up in a charity shop or thrown away after 5.

To be honest, a lot of May’s floral shirt patterns are classic Liberty prints, I recognise them as I have several myself, that I’ve had made for me, as Liberty’s off the peg stuff doesn’t fit me too well.

The off the peg stuff is typically about £135+ – Designers like Simon Carter use a lot of Liberty print, and I think Paul Smith and Ted Baker use a little from time to time, but Liberty prints are pretty much the “go to” when a mens designer of any class look to make a floral print.

Other people who wear them say when you watch the telly, are typically types like Jason Manford, Jimmy Carr, that sort of profile. Theres always a Liberty print somewhere on a telly near you worn by a minor celeb.

They’re great, they don’t date, they dont go out of fashion, as they’re never at the red hot end of fashion, they’re just artfully designed patterns that look great imho on a shirt.

Sorry, 3rd para line 3 should read Albany, not Admiral.

Why is he going to lose NCD then?

He’s basically been lied to by Admiral, to force him to use Albany. He’s already lost NCD, until liability is admitted with Admiral.

If there’s no dispute, the tp insurer will simply reimburse Admiral, and as they will record a zero balance, it’s as if the claim’s not been made. As soon as Admiral bank the cheque, the NCD gets reinstated, and frankly they are more likely to get the money back quickly than Admiral, (as per my previous post, the tp insurer is far more likely to quibble over the cost of the claim rather than the liability of it).

Basically, Admiral lied to avoid having to do anyhting, and bounced off the risk to Albany, who they own anyway, but can and will charge more for doing what they do than Admiral can, but have exposed your son to greater risks of litigation, as he is bearing the cost of the “credit” repair and hire, than if Admiral supplied and paid for it as per the contract he actually already has.

First thing I’d be doing is complaining to Admiral over misleading financial advice.

If they load at renewal, find another insurer.

All Albany do, is increase the value of your sons losses, in ways that are not immediately visible to him, to make cash out the crash.

From

1 – Hiring a car to your son, on a credit basis, for which he retains liability to pay if the insurers on the other side dispute the cost, (for which me might have to go to court to justify) rather than the garage providing a genuine courtesy car, or the other insurers a far lower cost hire car.

2 – Organising a credit repair, at labour rates nearly double that obtainable by the insurers. Again, he retains liability for the cost in the paperwork, its just “credit”, Albany are taking no risk, simply using your son to make money.

3 – Referring all parties to a solicitor. Whilst straight forward referral fees are now outlawed, there are ways round it.

If liability is not in dispute, he’d be far better off going to the other insurer direct. – Most matters end up in court these days over the cost of the claim, rather than who’s at fault.

Mark Kermode loved it! He seems to be a reasonable judge of films.

Seeing it tomorrow..

In fairness, the tube is mainly north of the river – it would make more sense to do Oyster Zones, that at least gets you out down to the arse end of Croydon (Coulsden South) or almost to Epsom (East/West Ewell). Georgaphically its a bit north, west and east london centric.

And South London is far nicer anyway.

Pipedream Scion?

Well, there’s been no blog update since March, despite regular ones before that.

I would guess they’ve gone bust.

To be honest, having got a bus home from Croydon last friday night, I think there ought to be male only carriages to save us from pissed up angry young women screaming and bellowing like little “Vicky Pollards” into their phones with the most amazingly strong language.

The idea that only men can upset fellow passengers is one that passed with “Oh Mr Darcy I am overcome” ladies in white lace dresses and parasols fainting in the sun from an overtightened whalebone corset.

Its the 200 fags each thats going to do the harm……