Strange Insurance Letter

JasonLVC

Recieved a letter in post today from my insurers saying -

"thank you for your call today, here is a claims reference number. if you can get quotes for the damage to your vehicle we will process......."

Apparently, I hit a cyclist three weeks ago and the cyclist has put an insurance claim in against me and my insurers were assuming I had damaged my vehicle hence why they sent the letter.

BUT

I never called them, I never hit a cyclist who lives in Cornwall (I live in Nottinghamshire). Calling the insurers, they told me that a cyclist had been hit in a front impact and my registration was the one witnessed. They would not tell me (data protection act) how my insurers were notified, but I'm assuming the police were involved here. They did tell me on what road and which town the accident happened.

They've have since got back to me today and told me that they've spoken to the 'third party' and it wasn't my car involved and so they'll close the file....and as it no longer concerned me they refused to talk to me about anything else (did the witness get the wrong reg, was the reg right (cloned) but on a different model car), again they said Data protection Act prevented them discusing it further. Even though it is about me.

Has anyone ever had any such ithing before. In over 15 years of driving I've never heard of this. Sounds very strange to me and if the police were involved they've simply chosen to pass the cyclist my insurance details to make a claim against me. Surely if he had been injured as he must habve been if he's trying to sue the person who hit him), then the police should have investigated?.

CIS

The question is, if it was a cloned numberplate then most likely the car was the same model/colour, if this was the case how did they now decide it wasn't your car ?

If it was a different make/model but same reg, you would probably have had the police at the door to investigate.

I would guess that the cyclist /witness wasn't 100% sure about the reg and so the insurance have caesed teh claim against the driver.

brummybloke

to solve this mystery here is the answer.

the cyclist will have got a partial registration ( or the witness), the driver obviously failed to stop at the scene of the accident and the police sent out letters to everyone with a simular car/colour/registration number. i have had to send out these sorts of letter before, the police can do a partial reg search for all hondas, black reg hg02g?? or what ever, this comes back with all registered keepers for that car type with the ?? being the missing digits.

a generic letter gets sent out to all the people within the car description and just wait until 1 person replies saying it was them.

-=Mr-J=-

Sounds more likely that the insurance company have messed up and sent a letter to the OP by accident.

The OP only assumes the Police are involved. As brummybloke says, if a partial reg search is conducted, the Police will have sent a letter not the insurance company.

Your not with eSure by any chance are you. I am fairly certain their databases got corrupted in Q4 2005, given the messing about I have had with them on my renewal. Apparently I keep my car on a driveway over 300 miles away from my home and they could not obtain funds from my Barclays bank account (not likely since I never have had one).

IvanOpinion

I go for a simple typo either in the registration number or the policy number.

I remember hearing a story several years back where a cyclist rode into a parked car. When the police arrived there were several witnesses willing to say that the car had driven into the cyclist ... the fact that there were more honest/observant witnesses about and the fact that the driver had been standing in the nearby butchers shop helped prove who was to blame.

Ivan

chika

You aren't with sainsburys, esure etc by any chance? The did a very similar thing to me when I had just started driving last year - I was in a right state as they initially refused to believe that it wasn't me

Its great that they dropped it so fast!

hjb123

Maybe if you try ringing your local police station and see if they can shed any light on the situation?

wigginsmum

This happened to my Mum last year; the insurer alleged she'd hit another car with her car in South London (she's never been to South London). She phoned the insurer who didn't believe her, so she phoned the local police station and spoke to a very nice guy who said he'd call the insurer. She hasn't heard anything further in the past 9 months about it.

JasonLVC

Thanks for everyone's posts - it's just annoying that the insurers couldn't do a simple thing like send the letter to the right person and then when they get it wrong, gide behind the Data protection Act.

Insurers are Dial Direct (but the ltter I got wasn't from them it was from NIG who were the actual underwriters, so Dial Direct didn't even have courtesy to write to me either).

whitelabel

simplist thing is to turn the Data protection act against them
send a formal request for all information pertaining to your policy including any manual additions


send a £10 cheque and they have 40 days to comply.
If they fail to do so then report them to the DPA commissioner

sujman

Interesting that several people have mentioned Esure and Q4 2005 in particular. Last November my bike got stolen from my shed. I reported it to the Police and Esure at about 3pm that day.

The next morning, I got a letter from a Electrical Company, saying that Esure had been in touch and wanted to organise the replacement of my Hi Fi set!!!!