Advice - Car Insurance incident, not sure where else to go!

StephanieBriggs

Hello all,

I'm not here and have been trailing the internet trying to find some advice and decided to ask here.

Basically on the 31st May I was involved in a car accident, where by a gentleman failed to stop/slow down at a pedestrian crossing running into the back of me, and shunting me into the car in front. Leaving me with a car that was not road worthy and in need of quite a bit of repair.

We swapped details and Direct Line explained it should be a simple no fault claim and pretty straight forward. However, 5 weeks later when our car was ready to collect, the garage advised us that we were still due to pay £600 excess on the vehicle as Direct Line had not waived the fee (as liability had not been established) which was news to us. Up until this time we had received no communication from direct line telling us this, after 3 hours of speaking to numerous people, who all told us different stories, we were told a waiver had been sent across to the garage and we should be able to collect our car. Upon going to collect the car, were told this was not the case and Direct Line had to knowledge of this when we called to complain.

We were left with the option of paying the £600 excess, or having to pay storage charges for our vehicle as well as paying £52 for the frankly awful hire car, so begrudgingly paid the £600 and were assured by Direct Line that it was the driver that hit me from behind that had not filled in the correct paper work and we would receive a cheque for £600 once it had been sorted.

This morning we rang to check the progress of the claim, to be told that the man who hit me is claiming I hit the car in front BEFORE he hit me and will only accept liability for the damage to the back of the car, and the woman who I was shunted into is claiming that she was not involved in the accident, and no damage was done to her car (despite the garage having to perform extensive repairs on the front of my car!!). So we are now left £600 down, loss of no claims for an accident that was in no way my fault.

Where can we go from here? Is there light at the end of the tunnel or have we been well and truly shafted?

Thanks

Tilt

Well basically what ever the man who hit you from behind says, he was liable because he hit you. How does he know that you hit the car in fromt first? I'm assuming that all 3 parties exchanged details including the car in front? I don't know what Direct Line are playing at here but they should be persuing the TP for the damages to the front of your car also. However, when it comes down to the excess, that i'm afraid is your responsibility to persue. Having said that, if you have legal protection then they should take car of it. Your excess is an un-insured loss and is recovered from the TP as well as any other consiquential losses such as car hire ect. My advice would be to write directly to the TP driver (who hit you from behind) stating quite clearly that you consider that he is responsible for the accident and as such you require him to re-inburse your excess of £600 within 7 days or you will commence legal proceedings in the small claims court against him without further notice. End the letter by advising him that he should pass the letter to his insurers if he wants them to handle the matter on his behalf. Send by recorded delivery and wait for your cheque to arrive.

Lum

Only advice I can give on this is to regularly chase Direct Line who are currently handlig your case for you. It's a bit late to switch to claiming from the third party.

How these claims offices seem to work is they will basically do nothing until something comes in relating to your case such as a letter from the third party insurance or a call from yourself, so to actually spur them into action to do anything or chase anything you need to keep calling, minimum once per week.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

direct line are not the best when it comes to claiming, have a bad habbit of lying down and being rolled over on with regards to liability for some reason and not helpfull at all when it comes to a TP lying about liability.

i'm woundering why the person who you got shunted into is stating they werent in the accident at all and no damage, after all that person would have to claim from the guy who rear ended you.

did you exchange details with the person who you got shunted into if so i would forward the copy of the details to your insurers stating that if this person wasnt involved why would they exchange details?

were there any witnesses, have you got their details, have DL contacted them or lost their details and not contacted them?

as above too late to be your own accident management handler now, keep onto DL and keep stating you do not accept any liablilty. get refrence numbers and time logs to you calls and call every 2 days.

maninthestreet

Surely in a case like this, there are two separate accidents:

1) The OP was rear-ended by the car behind them
2) The OP rear-ended the car in front, due to 1).

Lum

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

i'm woundering why the person who you got shunted into is stating they werent in the accident at all and no damage, after all that person would have to claim from the guy who rear ended you.

If there is no damage to their vehicle, all that admitting to having been rear-ended will do is push up their insurance for the next 5 years.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

Lum wrote: »

If there is no damage to their vehicle, all that admitting to having been rear-ended will do is push up their insurance for the next 5 years.

then a witness if nothing else when they got out to inspect, dont have to admit car was involved but could say that they stopped to help.

Lum

So how does the OP explain their front end damage if the person in front is claiming not to be involved? That seems to be the issue here.

vaio

I thought the issue was the OP (in car says C ran into the back of B and pushed it into A thus it's all down to car C

but, the driver of car C is saying that B ran into A before C hit B thus B is responsible for the damage to the front of B & back of A and C is only responsible for the damage to front of C & back of B so B loses excess & NCB

Further complicated by the fact that A is denying being hit at all

a nightmare to describe and I suspect even more so to sort out

marlot

I bet A was uninsured, hence not wanting to have the insurance companies involved!

spiro

Do you have photos of all three cars taken at the time of the accident? They should show any damage to car 1.

I would also speak to the garage that repaired your car and ask if it would be possible for your car to have that amount of damage (you dont say what it was) whilst the car you hit was undamaged.