Insurance Claim or Cash Payment?

tenmah

I am just after some advice please?

My daughter (age 21 )is in her first year of driving and her renewal is due next month.

Yesterday she pulled into a shop car park and caught the side of the car next to her. She did the decent thing and left her mobile number.

She looked at the damage and there appeared to be a dent and a scratch. The owner has now contacted her to say there are a lot of scratches and the door is ‘knocked in quite a bit’ and it won’t open.

She is going to take it to a garage and let my daughter know how much it will cost.

My daughter was hoping to pay for the damage as she doesn’t want her renewal to shoot up, but I am concerned that this lady is perhaps getting more fixed than my daughter actually damaged.

However I wasn’t there so didn’t see one way of the other. My daughter would not try to shirk her responsibility as she proved by leaving her phone number.

So basically what I am asking is should she pay cash to save claiming on her insurance – she is a university student and doesn’t have much money – or should she claim on her insurance and hope that by explaining what happened the insurance company could work out what damage she actually did and what should be paid for?

Thanks!

Quentin

This could escalate - the costs of the incident may be far more than just the garage repair, (car hire may be needed whilst the car is in dock, there may be loss of earnings, inconvenience etc to pay for).

Let your insurers deal with it, and if it turns out to be reasonable, then your daughter can repay the insurance company and have the claim removed from her history.

Though it is not up to your daughter to make any claim, leave it to the third party to make a claim against her. Your daughter has nothing to gain by admitting liability, and should not do so. (Any cash settlement she might give to the third party should be clearly marked that it is not an admission of liability.)

rummy

I couldn't agree more with Quentin, whatever she does, regardless of whether her premium goes up or not you MUST go through insurance. If you don't, not only are you breaking the law (all accidents must be reported by law as told by Diamond Insurance) but you could be up for much worse.

Recently a friend of mine was contacted by insurers for an accident which happened a year ago where the driver is claiming lots of serious damage although at the time they both agreed to just pay it off and not get involved. She's now in a law suit with the dude. Should she have gone through insurance in the first place, she wouldn't be in this position right now.

I've also had someone smack into my car once and agreed not to contact insurance because like your daughter I was an university student at the time and didn't want my premium to go up. It was the biggest mistake I made - my entire car was written off two months after and the guy got away with paying nothing. From that I learnt to go through insurance regardless of whether I lose all my NCB or not.

So as Quentin says brilliantly in his post - let your insurers deal with it! You won't regret it!

dacouch

There is no law that says you must report a claim to your insurers...

Atermis

yeah no law... its is however usually in the policy booklet that any incident needs to be reported, even if its just for notification purposes.