A bus hit me!

talksr

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Whilst I think it's lovely that you want to help your brother, I do wonder if you are getting helping confused with taking control. The demand for payment was written to your brother, any response should be from your brother, your brother will be the one getting letters from debt collectors if this is not resolved. The bus company probably shouldn't communicate with you in any way over this matter due to data protection.

I have been composing my own letters of complaint or other formal communication since I left home at 17 - I am now 36 and my father still checks (and occasionally edits ) the final draft! By all means do the same for your brother but don't write the letter for him. If he is old enough to drive he is an adult.

This website is amazing, it has advice on every matter directly and indirectly related to finances. I think it could benefit you all to point your brother in the direction of this website and start delegating a few small tasks so that you have support managing the household. Maybe you do not "have" (your word) to do as much as you think.

Taking control is probably a good summary. I just can't stand to see people getting messed around and not sorting things.
He has visited the depot a couple of times and they have treated him like an idiot. The first time, he asked to see the bus and take a look at the damage. They ushered him into their office and then the bus in question drove out of the depot at high speed and went off down the road never to return.
The company is not exactly a cow boy outfit, the boast 'luxury' coaches, whilst this one was nowhere near luxury, they have some very impressive models in their fleet. So in that respect, they do not seem to be the sort of company to pull a fast one, but you never know.

All of this asking for cash for the repair work and completely disregarding my brother's statement that he was stationary and did not hit the bus have been completely dismissed.

What is even more strange, is it happened months ago. He got a letter from the company saying you hit our bus, we have 2 witnesses and a driver statement to back up the fact you caused the accident. We need you to pay us for the damages. He went straight to see them as mentioned above, since heard nothing until this week, months later.

I was thinking of including in my letter, representing him that we would like to see full copies of these witness statements.

What do you think?

Quentin

You should only start negotiation if you never intend making a claim from your insurer (whatever the outcome of this - can you be certain a court will dismiss any claim made against you?)

Otherwise if you want your insurer to deal with any eventual liability decided against your brother, you should just pass all correspondence (unanswered) over to your insurer to deal with, as per the conditions of your policy.

olly300

As firefox has already stated the bus company can refuse to deal with you if you "represent him" as you put it. They are likely to ignore your letter completely as your brother is an adult. Therefore you need to write the letter with him and make him sign it..

He needs to learn to do these things. One day you are not going to be around to help him so least he would have an idea of what to do. He has tried one way of sorting it out so now he needs to learn that there is a different way.

Also you need to remember regardless of whether your brother pays for the accident himself or not, he has to inform whoever insures him next year that he had an accident regardless of whether it was his fault. This means his premium will go up anyway.

If he doesn't tell them and they find out, he risks them cancelling his insurance and difficulty getting other types of insurance for years to come.

I also doubt if he immediately contacted his insurance company on the day of the accident then sent in pictures of the damage, the bus company would try and do this. I feel they are "conning" him because he refuses to go through his insurance as they would also have to go through their insurance company. It's unlikely to be the first time that bus driver had done something like this, or they may also be a new bus driver themselves.

mcjordi

i would let this go to the insurers.
they will find out who was to blame

talksr

mcjordi wrote: »

i would let this go to the insurers.
they will find out who was to blame

Seems the most sensible thing. I have just checked and unfortunately he is insured with 1st Central. Which seems like even more bad luck.....

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1669745

Oh dear oh dear
Thanks for your input

MikeThomas

I'm not going to lie, I read the post a few times and came int othe thread thinking that a bus had hit your mate. and his bloody corpse had then damaged the bus in someway and they were suing a corpse for repair...

hmm..