My car was hit by a stolen vehicle...

keith1950

From past experience I have found it best to try to get a courtesy car from the repairer as soon as possible. If you go down the route of hire car and the losses turn out to be unrecoverable the hire company could come back to you for payment. ( Unless your insurance specifically allows you a free hire car for up to 14 days. ) If you search the posts on here you will find the sort of problems people have had with companies such as Drive Assist.

Happychappy

squack wrote: »

sounds to me like the coppers are at least 25% liable

How does that one work :rotfl:

squack

Happychappy wrote: »

How does that one work :rotfl:

because they chase people until they smash

of course people shouldn't steal cars but these pursuits often cause damage to property and loss of life to innocent bystanders/motorists let alone the scum bags

the cops are buzzing on the adrenaline of the chase which gets them high

whats the point of getting your stolen goods back if they are smashed and ruined

whether its a car or anything else
:money:

Dr.Shoe_2

When you insure a car for Third Party, Fire and Theft you are indemnifying against damage caused by your vehicle regardless of whether you are personally driving it or not. In this case, the owner of the stolen car (the hire company) will not be able to claim for damage to their vehicle but you should be able to claim from the other party's insurance. It is actually a result that it is a hire company as they will certainly have cover for their vehicles. You would have been unlucky (and would not have been able to claim) had the vehicle itself been uninsured.

In summary, it is the vehicle that's insured for third party damage and not the driver.

lisyloo

Can I claim back hire car charges, and loss of car from now until repairs are done?

Why haven't you got a free courtesy car from the garage doing the repairs?
Yes you are entitled to claim back reasonable losses assuming the other party is found liable.
However paying for a hire car when most gargages give you a courtesy car for free, may not be seen as reasonable.
You do have a duty to mitigate your losses i.e. be reasonable, so you might get into trouble if you aren't not going down an obvious and cheap route and are running up bills unnecessarily.

Perhaps you can explain why your insurer hasn't provided a free courtesy car?

mininoel

My insurance company have been very unhelpful all round - at first I had to request the guaranteed hire car i paid extra for on my policy 3times before they would agree to the request and then I had to arrange to get myself to the hire car company's base. They collected my car 4 days after the incident and took it to a garage over 20 miles away. I then had to ring daily to find out what was happening. The damage was estimated at £3100 car is only worth £2700 according to a valuation I had. But insurance company have said they will fix - however won't be ready for at least a month and according to them as I have nobody to claim against for things i loose my no claims bonus, i pay the excess and am no courtesy car offered. At first they even refused to give me a contact number of their legal team even though I have legal protection cover.

To be honest its ridiculous....legal team have told me I shouldnt have started repairs without police report...I didnt insurance company just collected car after i reported incident. Now I am having to pay for upgrade to the car on my guaranteed policy as needed to get my son around and am now car less......

Who do I need to contact...the legal team, my insurance company??? What am I supposed to be doing I am clueless?

Debt_Free_Chick

mininoel wrote: »

according to them as I have nobody to claim against

I suggest you ask them why they are not claiming from the owner/insurer of the car that hit you. That car should have been insured for theft and the damage to your car is as a result of that act.

dacouch

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

I suggest you ask them why they are not claiming from the owner/insurer of the car that hit you. That car should have been insured for theft and the damage to your car is as a result of that act.

A worrying amount of Insurance Claims / Customer Service (Call centre) staff do not realise this basic principle of Insurance. They say that either the thief was not a named driver on the policy so is not covered or amusingly they say it only covers drivers who are driving with the owners permission

Debt_Free_Chick

dacouch wrote: »

A worrying amount of Insurance Claims / Customer Service (Call centre) staff do not realise this basic principle of Insurance. They say that either the thief was not a named driver on the policy so is not covered or amusingly they say it only covers drivers who are driving with the owners permission

It used to be the case that almost everyone working in insurance studied ACII, including claims handlers.

Now, we just have (as you rightly put it) Customer Service (oxymorons?) or Call Centre staff .... probably the same shower that administer the London Congestion Charge! Some call centres actually work for several different clients, in different businesses, so after taking the call about the insurance claim, the next call could be about a failed delivery for an online order!

This whole business model sucks, IMHO - especially for a skilled role like an insurance claims handler.

Mininoel - insist that your insurance company claims from the stolen car's insurer. If you feel like you're getting nowhere, ask for your call to be "escalated" - call centre speak for "let me speak to a manager! Escalate again if you don't get a satisfactory response; repeat until you do get a satisfactory response from someone who knows what they're talking about.

Debt_Free_Chick

dacouch wrote: »

amusingly they say it only covers drivers who are driving with the owners permission

Thief: Can I steal your car?
Owner: Sure - that way you'll be covered on my insurance when you crash it

:wall::wall::wall::wall: