Have I left it too long to claim?

piking2k

Hello.

I had a ding with my neighbour's car a few weeks ago (it was my fault) and left a small dent in his rear wheel arch, though my own car was not damaged. At the time I thought I wouldn't bother with reporting it to my insurance company reasoning that I'd lose seven odd years of no-claims for the sake of a £500 absolute worst case repair. The dent is really quite small and hasn't even gone through the paintwork.

Anyway, a few weeks pass and I've now discovered this may be a bit pricier than I thought. It turns out the cheap mobile dent fixing guys can't do this type of dent, since they can't get behind it because of where it is. A local bodyshop has quoted £1200, and there is one more quote which I hope will come in a bit cheaper. If it doesn't I'm wondering whether I have been daft by not claiming on the insurance straight away. Could anyone offer any advice, specifically:

(a) Is it too late to claim on my car insurance policy (I have fully comp with Aviva), since the ding occurred ~three weeks ago?

(b) If it isn't too late, might it still be worth just paying cash (and facing the wrath of my wife) in the long run anyway? My policy costs £300 p.a., and I'm thinking that if that price factors in, say, a 60% discount for no claims which I will lose should I make a claim I could end up paying more than the £1,200 over a couple of years in higher premiums. I don't have protected no-claims.

Thanks

vaio

You won't lose all your NCB, the norm is two years.

Your base premium almost certainly will rise. You NCB will be back to max in two years, the increased premiums will stay for 3 or 5 years depending on insurer so do the sums (run some dummy quotes online) and see which is the best course of action.

I'd have thought you'd be all right after three weeks but if you are concerned you could think about moving the date of the incident

dogbot

You can still log the claim with your insurer.

In fact, you should declare the incident whether you intend to claim or not.

Quentin

You are assuming that the only costs will be the repair. That may not be so (eg there may be hire car charges to pay whilst the car is in dock), so maybe you want to leave this to your insurer to deal with.

If the final cost is reasonable, you can always have your NCD reinstated by reimbursing your insurer their outlay over the incident.

Orrin

They might get a bit sniffy with you on the phone when you tell them it happened several weeks ago, but there shouldn't be a problem reporting it late. I've had a couple of incidents over the years that I forgot to report initially and there was never a problem even though one was many months later.

Run some quotes online and work out how much extra you're likely to have to pay on your premium and then figure out what's going to be cheaper from there.

Quentin

It definitely isn't too late for your insurer to pay out to your neighbour, (third parties have 6 years to claim for damage to property).

You may be in breach of some clause in the policy that requires you to report incidents to them in a timeframe, though
a couple of weeks over Christmas shouldn't cause any hassle.