winter warning regarding your insurance cover

lisyloo

Hot water WILL crack your windscreen.

hmm........never cracked mine in 19 years.
I guess it depends how hot you have it.

lisyloo

I don't think the OP said that, she said she couldn't get up the hill and left it parked at the bottom. In any case the accident took place the following morning, some time after the OP parked up.

Apologies, I may have mixed this up with another case.
Where someone skidded and then criticised the driving of the person skidding into them.
My apologies if I mixed it up.

dunstonh

i was not at fault, my car was visible the roads were gritted athough still had a lot of snow on them and im still being penalised for someone elses mistake......surely not right

1 - you are not being penalised.
2 - you will get your money back

Your problem is that you went for lower quality insurance in TPF&T. Had you been fully comprehensive with an insurer that provides a temporary car whilst yours is being repaired then you wouldnt have had this problem.

You can choose to hire a car yourself and claim back out of pocket expenses. That is not totally risk free as if its proven that you had some fault then you may not get this money back. However, if you are confident you had no fault then you could do it.

For the future, you could consider getting comprehensive car insurance. Often there is little cost difference nowadays.

Ian_W

Hadrian wrote: »

Any vehicle parked or stationary at the side of the carriageway, unless parked in a designated and marked parking bay, is technically an obstruction.

Can you provide a reference for this rather sweeping generalisation?

AFAIK it is perfectly legal and acceptable to park a car at the side of the road unless there are restrictions (eg: yellow lines, zig zags etc) or the position of the vehicle wilfully causes an unnecessary obstruction to traffic or is in some way dangerous (eg: blind brow of a hill causing overtaking vehicles into the path of oncoming ones).

bubblegumcola

HAWking wrote: »

Personally i don't think you can ever be too careful in these extreme conditions de-icer is great but economic cutbacks have seen it becoming diluted with water which can actually end up refreezing and creating more ice!! The best bet is to get boiling hot water (as hot as you can) and pour it all over, there is an urban myth that it cracks glass but just in case windscreen claims are free anyway.

My best advice - fit some spikes to your shoes and walk it! Alternatively, did out those old tennis rackets and spread the weight...

You should check your individual car insurance policy, not all windscreen claims are free. I'm with Tesco and its £10 excess for a repair and £75 for a full windscreen replacement with the approved repairer Autoglass. They changed it, we used to get minor repairs for free but we now pay a tenner.

patman99

When I shop around each year for motor insurance, I find the diff in cost between tpf&t an f/c is normally only a fiver anyway, and if you run the cheapest qoutes through a cashback site you can save a small fortune.

lisyloo

I find the diff in cost between tpf&t an f/c is normally only a fiver anyway

I'm guessing you aren't 17 then Pat? :rotfl:

Seriously my insurance works out about £150 fully comp and that's without cashback and last time fully compe was cheapest.
But for someone who's 17 it might be something like £3000 fully comp and £1800 3rd party fire and theft i.e. a LOT more than a fiver.
On an old car, it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for fully comp, because at the slightest dent they'll give you a few hundred to write it off.
For some older people with a cheap car it can be cheaper to get fully comp with a huge excess i.e. never intend to use the fully comp, but the policy is cheaper.

But I'm afraid for younger people, especially males, the price different can still be very large........and that does incoude shopping around.

patman99

My f-i-l was qouted "250 tpf&t, and he is nearly 80. His car?, a bog standard '96 reg Fiesta 1.4. Needless to say, he didn't take-up the qoute.

cheekycheeks000

hi id just like to say thank you to all who gave advice on original post...some very usefull. i called the other persons insurance and managed to get things sorted out(they gave me wrong numbers and totaly wrong company to start with),anyway i eventually found right comp and within half an hour i had a courtesy car arranged and a time for my car to be collected to be fixed. car will take 2 wks to get sorted due to the holidays ect but i dont mind now as i have replacement car. again thanx for advice and support,it was mostly very usefull.xxxx