winter warning regarding your insurace cover

cheekycheeks000

be kind this is my first post
i live in a wee village situated on a hill. due to bad snow i could not get my car home on sunday night so i parked it outside the local shop at bottom of village where the next morning it was hit by another car.luckily the person who hit it also lives in village and left there details on car window,cut a long story short she is fully comp and we are third pary fire and theft but because her car slid on slow we cant get cortesy car and have to wait for her insurance to contact us and we have to get 3 independent assessors,let them choose which one to use PAY FOR REPAIR OURSELVES and the raise a small claims to get money back from her insurance. and all this three days before xmas oh joy BEWARE!!!!!!!!!aparently this is common policy for everyone:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

delambo

Try help hire. They will generally give you a car and charge it to the insurance of the person at fault. Certainly cant hurt to try.

Lum

Yes, basically you need a lawyer to handle the claim for you as 3rd party fire+theft doesn't include this by default. It's an optional extra and also a complete con as for the £35 legal cover most insurers will just pass your details on to HelpHire or a similar no-win no-fee lawyer, who then pay your insurer a referral fee for giving them your business.

You can contact HelpHire yourself, http://www.helphire.co.uk/ or there are a few similar companies out there (though I have heard bad things about Drive Assist who are the second biggest) and they will take on your case and get you a hire car pretty damn quick, arrange and pay for the repairs and claim off the other person's insurance. Only things they charge for is an insurance policy against the 3rd party not paying up (this costs a tenner and absolves you of any responsibility to pay the hire or repair charges if the 3rd party insurance refuse or are untraceable) and a "collision damage waiver" on the car which I think is £2.50 a day up to a max of £40. Both are optional but recommended, especially if you plan to drive that hire car in the snow

Premier_2

cheekycheeks000 wrote: »

be kind this is my first post
i live in a wee village situated on a hill. due to bad snow i could not get my car home on sunday night so i parked it outside the local shop at bottom of village where the next morning it was hit by another car.luckily the person who hit it also lives in village and left there details on car window,cut a long story short she is fully comp and we are third pary fire and theft but because her car slid on slow we cant get cortesy car and have to wait for her insurance to contact us and we have to get 3 independent assessors,let them choose which one to use PAY FOR REPAIR OURSELVES and the raise a small claims to get money back from her insurance. and all this three days before xmas oh joy BEWARE!!!!!!!!!aparently this is common policy for everyone:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Not at all.

You can make a claim direct to the other persons insurer. No need for court. No need for a lawyer. (fingers crossed)

You can also hire a replacement car for the period your car is not available to you. The insurer will usually settle this too without argument if they accept their driver was at fault and the costs you claim are reasonable.

Regarding the repair costs, it may be possible to get a pro-forma invoice from the repairer and get the insurer to pay against that.

You will only need to go to court if the insurer does not accept the claim, you think they should and you therefore need a court to resolve the dispute. Remember, courts are there as a matter of last resort, not the first place to turn to in case of dispute.

ozvaldinho

Have you tried speaking directly to the Third Party's insurer? It's in their interest to get things sorted as quickly as possible and you may well find them much more co-operative than your own insurer.
Also, given the weather, I very much doubt you'll be able to get your car fixed before Christmas as the bodyshops are all working flat-out now with huge backlogs of work. Courtesey cars are also in very short supply.
If there is no question of liability, they should give you a courtesey car and arrange repairs with their own authorised repairer and pay them direct.

Which insurer are you with, by the way. Don't tell me it's Swiftcover, please!

stef73

I am with swiftcover and had a none fault accident on monday (someone hit me ) im full comp and have been told either i pay the excess to get it fixed at my cost or wait 30 days to see if the other parties insurance will accept fault and pay . Then i have to deal with the other persons insurance direct not swiftcover !.If the claim is not settled in 30 days i have to claim on my insurace and swiftcover might not be able to help recover the loss !. I will never use them again and will tell every on i can not to use them .

housesitter

NEVER deal through your insurer if an accident if someone elses fault.
You should always talk and deal with their insurer.
Yours will be paying for things and wish to cut their losses so you'll end up worse off going through your own than talking direct to theirs.

Your insurers aim is to settle as fast as possible and claim as much for them from the third party whilst saving any costs they might incurr from actually helping you.

Your aim is to get your car back in a condition prior to the accident and be well catered for.

Your objectives are utterly different.
Don't think they are there to help you, they are there to mitigate loss. Their own, not yours!!

cheekycheeks000

thank you i will be contacting the other partys insurance again, although they wouldnt give me any info (data protection) the last time.think its time to get tough now, im with 1st quote and ive heard nothing but bad reviews since it happened.it was driver assist that said they couldnt give us a courtesy car (after trying to push one on us)when we said it was because of snow that it happend. I WILL BE PUSHING FOR A CAR TOMORROW MORNING,thank you all for advice.xxx

robredz

Be careful with courtesy cars that offer like for like, if you are offered one check here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/caradvice/honestjohn/6055957/How-credit-hire-companies-can-inflate-insurance-claims.html

I would contact the other parties insurance direct

cheekycheeks000

thank you all for the advice it was much appreciated and i put it to good use. i got back on the phone to other persons insurance on monday only to find that i had ben given wrong broker.after a we bit of messing around i got on to the right person and had a courtesy car booked and a garage on there way to collect my damaged car within half an hour. car will take approx 2 wks to be fixed but this is not a prob as i have a replacement. a big thank you again to all.xxxxxxx

catflea

Just to add to this and could be very important if things get difficult in any car hire case.

In order to legitimatly claim back the cost of a credit hire car (i.e you dont pay and they persue the other party for payment) you must be able to prove that you are impecunious and therefore could not afford to rent a car through the normal channels.

Now personally, I didn't know this until I was involved in an alledged incident (of which I had no involvement or knowledge) and the solicitor acting on my behalf actually brought this into the defence paperwork.