car insurance excess help please, I'm so confused

lorraine

Last year I took out my first policy and put the excess at 1020 now its come to renewal time I was talking to the person on the phone and they said that if I had crashed my car I would have to pay the £1020 if I wanted my car fixed or not (I'm fully comp which worked out cheaper than TPFT )

is this right, or would I only pay the £1020 if I wanted my car fixed, I am with N. Union at the moment if that makes a difference.

MTIA
Lorraine

P.s Its not just women as I have asked my hubby aswell and he hasn't got a clue, he said I have confused him :rotfl:

Astaroth

I have never seen a personal lines insurance policy that charges an excess on third party claims - this does occur in some commercial policies and I know that some personal lines insurers have considered introducing TP excesses but I am unaware of anyone that has gone ahead with this yet.

Best option as ever is to read your policy documents and it will state in there when the excess is payable - normally it is only under the AD (own vehicle damage), Fire, Theft & vandalism (technically part of AD but it confuses some people so will separate it out)

lorraine

Will have a read, but I'm not very good at taking it in, just made me jump out of my skin thinking that I did have an accident I would technically lose my car as its not worth much and I'd have to pay £1020

flea72

yes, you will have an excess that you need to pay. however if the accident isnt your fault, you should be able to claim this back from the other party.

having an excess, means it has brought down the price of your policy. if you want no excess, then your premium will increase, although saying that if you went for a no excess policy, it probably wouldnt cost £1020 more than a policy that has an excess of that amount.

very few insurance companies have nil excess though, most have £200 min

as for having to pay the excess whether you have the car repaired or not, is a bit strange. ok, you ahve to notify your insurance company of any accidents, but the excess is usually paid to the garage doing the repair work, not to the insurance company. so i have no idea, why or how the insurance company would go about claiming the money. perhaps they meant, if the accident was your fault, you would have to pay the excess, to cover repair to the other car, they werent necessarily talking about repair of your car.

hth flea

Astaroth

flea72 wrote:

i have no idea, why or how the insurance company would go about claiming the money.

Would have thought the why an insurance company would make policyholders pay a large excess is fairly obvious... given people take the dangerous route of assuming what cover they are getting rather than actually reading the documents it would be an easy way to reduce your operating costs and therefore enable you to lower the premiums you quote for people.

lisyloo

however if the accident isnt your fault, you should be able to claim this back from the other party.

Beware here.
In order to have a successful claim against a 3rd party you need
a) An identifiable 3rd party
b) For them to have some money.

So if you car is stolen by persons unknown you cannot get your excess back.
If you can identify the person but they have no money e.g. poor student, then you will not be able to obtain it if they have no assets or income.