My parked car was crashed into!

C_Mababejive

Dont let them take it to a preferred garage.
What make/model /year value is your car..?

zudecke

It's a Mini Cooper 2002 (Auto) 52 plate..

colino

Please note that some big organisations, say eponymous garage businesses, are self-insuring, so the good thing is when they take responsibility for damage the incident doesn't show up on the database. The bad thing is it will go into one of their own, barely above fast-fit quality garages for repair.
Make sure you know who you are dealing with, what their quality is like and whether you should instead bite the bullet and hand it over to your own insurer to handle.

daveyjp

2002 car with that much damage, be prepared to say goodbye, but you may be lucky as the Mini holds its value.

I'd get my insurance company involved, but only to ensure nothing is done to the car until the other party have accepted full liability in writing and you have also been informed of this in writing. Until this is done if you progress a claim you will have to pay your excess and claim it back.

Resist any offers of a credit hire car at this stage as you may be liable to pay for it.

Tow truck costs are part of your claim - your insurance company can arrange this.

neilmcl

King wrote: »

II don't see any advantage of telling your insurers as it would only increase your costs.

May not be advantageous but the OP will be contractually obliged to inform his insurer of any accidents.

neilmcl

C_Mababejive wrote: »

Dont let them take it to a preferred garage.
What make/model /year value is your car..?

I believe they would be referring to the OP's preferred repairer.

zudecke

daveyjp wrote: »

2002 car with that much damage, be prepared to say goodbye, but you may be lucky as the Mini holds its value.

I'd get my insurance company involved, but only to ensure nothing is done to the car until the other party have accepted full liability in writing and you have also been informed of this in writing. Until this is done if you progress a claim you will have to pay your excess and claim it back.

Resist any offers of a credit hire car at this stage as you may be liable to pay for it.

Tow truck costs are part of your claim - your insurance company can arrange this.

Just to clarify your second paragraph.. You're suggesting I inform my insurer "to ensure nothing is done to the car until the other party have accepted full liability in writing".. What do you mean here exactly? How will that help?

Also, are you saying I can claim the excess back? From who? Doesn't that defeat the point of having excess charges in the first place though?

Damn.. They're sending me a hire car now! What shall I do?


Excuse my somewhat ignorant questions.. I have never made an insurance claim for anything before, let alone my beloved Mini! Want to make sure I get this done right and to the least amount of cost/burden to me, as it wasn't my fault!

Z

daveyjp

We had this last year with my wife's car which was hit whilst stationary.

Until the other party accepts full liability you are responsible for the claim which includes paying the excess and losing your NCB, or having a claim against any protected NCB.

For a case where it was obviously the third party's liability we weren't willing to pay £250 excess and lose 6 years NCB before getting the car repaired. We advised our insurance company that nothing would happen until full liability was admitted. It took time, but liability was accepted, we had the car repaired at our garage of choice, we had no excess to pay and NCB remained at 9 years.

As regards hire car check the small print carefully and ask who is paying. Get them to confirm in writing that you will in no way be liable for any hire charges.

zudecke

daveyjp wrote: »

We had this last year with my wife's car which was hit whilst stationary.

Until the other party accepts full liability you are responsible for the claim which includes paying the excess and losing your NCB, or having a claim against any protected NCB.

For a case where it was obviously the third party's liability we weren't willing to pay £250 excess and lose 6 years NCB before getting the car repaired. We advised our insurance company that nothing would happen until full liability was admitted. It took time, but liability was accepted, we had the car repaired at our garage of choice, we had no excess to pay and NCB remained at 9 years.

As regards hire car check the small print carefully and ask who is paying. Get them to confirm in writing that you will in no way be liable for any hire charges.

Makes a lot more sense!

Can you please just further clarify: "We advised our insurance company that nothing would happen until full liability was admitted.".. What do you mean you told your insurer that nothing would happen until you had written evidence that the other driver was responsible?

Do you mean they didn't process a claim or anything while you waited for this proof?

zudecke

Is it advisable to ring up the car rental company whose car hit me and tell them that I've informed my insurer and that I want to see written proof that they were 100% liable for the crash?

Remember, I also have a very upstanding witness to the whole thing who is happy to make a statement on what happened. SO I don't think there's any way out of it for the car rental company.

Plus, there's also the owner of the car in front of mine that mine jolted into from the impact..