come home to find OH car's damaged. advice needed.

HalfPint

To cut a long story short, I came home this evening and drove past Mr H's parked car and noticed it was dented. After I parked up, I took a good look and someone has hit his car, leaving large chunks of their paint on the ground. They've damaged the rear wing & wheel arch. We found the culprit (not difficult considering the amount of paint missing from their vehicle!)

My question is...is it worth going through our insurance. Our car is a M reg fiesta with 200 quid excess on the insurance. I've taken all their insurance details and photographs of the damage to both vehicles. I don't want our premiums to go up, the car is drivable and sound, it just looks crap but I do need to get it checked incase there is any damage to the sills. Mr H and I are happy to deal outwith insurance and I think the other party will be too.

Please can I have some advice as to what to do...never had to deal with this before!

Many thanks

HP x

PS, I suspect this guy isn't the best driver in the world as my car has been scuffed on 2 occasions parked outside our house, again by a white vehicle.

paddedjohn

if they are happy to pay for the repair without getting their insurance involved then go down that route, technically you are meant to inform your insurance of a non fault claim but they will probably load your premiums come renewal so its up to you if you want to keep it from them.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

for the sake of an M reg fiesta, if the chassis and suspension hub etc are fine then i'd leave the cosmetic damage knocking out as much as you can you can get replacement rear panels but it will cost more than the cars worth if you went down the rout of having it fitted and sprayed.

you lose the car going through insurance it will be a write off D or C catagory. so if you wish just look at local repairers and go through dealing with it without informing insurers, he pays for the damage and his own car.

londonTiger

sounds like the value of the car isn't that much. if it's just body damage without any structural damage (if it hit a wheel there's a chance of bad wheel/alloy alignment which is costly to fix).

If it's just costmetic damage just get the other driver to pay for the repairs. Even if you weren't to blame here, you still have to report that you were involved in an accident, which can add to premiums. Although they claim that it doesn't.

My mate had that happen to his banger, bumper got thrashed on his ford ka, and the rear bumper is pretty big so it looked horrble. He got the other driver to pay for the damages, and just pocketed the money without repairing it. It was just a temporary car to build up noclaims for something better.

Anyways a sidenote to all this, when you have to street park, don't park your car on the front or rear of the parking bays if you can avoid it.

Also park as close to the kerb as possible, or park next to a car that's far away from the kerb than you.

Doing these two things means that the other cars will be like a "human shield" sort of thing, normally when clumsy drivers knock other parked cars wing mirrors, they'll ususally knock onto one and then brake or drive out. If some other car is sticking out more than you then they'll get hit and not you.

Lum

Just going to agree with the others here, if you go through insurance they'll write that car off which is going to be more hassle than it's worth, as they'll pay you about £300 for it, subtract your £200 excess and with some insurers they'll cancel your policy and subtract any outstanding payments you have towards the rest of the year. There have been documented cases on this forum of people ending up with no payout and no car when they've claimed on an old banger through insurance.

Sure you'll get the £200 excess back eventually if they can find the other person and pay up. Don't think that because you know who it is that they'll listen to you, take any notice or put any effort into finding them. It's not cost effective for them to do so.

If you can persuade the other person to pay up then great, if you can't you're still better off keeping the insurance out of the loop.

Unless you have some special attachment to that car, and/or it's otherwise mint, I'd just bash it back into roughly the right shape with a hammer, and take care of any damaged paintwork with a rattlecan to prevent rust. If you can get the other person to pay up then just pocket the cash.

Probably want to get the alignment checked though. By which I mean a proper 4 wheel alignment, not just getting the tracking done at Krap Fit.


One last thing. Take pictures of the damage to both cars ASAP, and in any case take pictures before you approach the other driver. If you intend to use your phone to show the pictures to the other driver then take a backup of the pictures to your PC first.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

dont report you dont get loaded in premiums. simples.....

youll get the YOU HAVE TO REPORT IT brigade here but its your choice at the end of the day.

i wouldnt bother personally just have a mechanic look at the rear suspension hub etc see if theres damage if not its just cosmetic then upto you whether you just pocket the money for the damage, or just for the sake of it repair it so it doent look so bad but i would just see if the panel could be knocked back as good as you can get it replace a bumper from a scrappy if its damaged etc and keep the rest.

property.advert

Get it checked over and I'd be minded to put it through a new MOT. Why ? because I knew someone who did a cash settlement only to find at MOT time that a whole lens unit or whatever was cracked and got hit with a £300 bill.

Destination_..._?

The guilty party has agreed to pay for the repair job himself that's fine . Is it because he believes it's not going to cost that much to get it repaired that's the danger.
If he has under estimated the damage and the cost to repairing your vehicle ? New parts plus labour it's not cheap .

zzzLazyDaisy

I had an idiot taxi driver reverse into my bumper in a car park at speed. He told me it would just be a few pounds to sort out the dent in the bumber and wanted to write me a cheque on the spot. I refused and took it to my own local garage and it turned out there was over £1000 worth of damage under the bonnet. So do get your car checked out.

HalfPint

Thanks you everyone for your replies.

The car isn't worth anything, so I suspected the Insurance Co would write it off. It's a great wee car, gets us from A to B and doesn't cost the earth to run so I'm loath to get rid just cause of this.

Mr H is taking it to a garage this morning, 2 reasons: 1 to check there is not any serious damage and 2 to get an estimate of repair. We're then going to take it to the other party and see if they will cough up (and I think they want to keep it out of the insurance lark too)

Thanks again for the advice (i'll let you know if they coughup!)

HP x

forgotmyname

I agree with the post above, Do you really want to commit fraud for not declaring the incident?

Did the other party own up or did you have to find them? I would have phoned the police and reported it as a failure to stop/report.

The other driver will get a nice big fine and probably 6 points.
He may think twice about not leaving his details next time.

Make sure he offers a sensible figure to get the work done, Even if you dont, Its something towards your next car.

Park facing the other way so he can get the other side to match