Car insurance - settling privately

Adpro2

The Mrs decided to take out a collegues Honda leased car in her company car park. To not affect her no claims she settled with Norwich insurance personally and paid the bodyshop bill of £400 to NU. The bill from Norwich Union stated 'our policy holder is responsible for VAT and £250 excess'. A year later the leased company (RAC legal services - fleet claims) are demanding the £250 excess from her!

Is this possible?

Bossyboots

When the repair was done, the policy holder will have had to pay the excess direct to the garage. If your wife has paid the full bodyshop bill back to the insurers, then they should be the ones refunding the excess. Do you still have the bill? I am wondering whether what has been paid is the balance of the bill minus the excess so that is still outstanding.

packetlos

Adpro2 wrote:

The Mrs decided to take out a collegues Honda leased car in her company car park. To not affect her no claims she settled with Norwich insurance personally and paid the bodyshop bill of £400 to NU. The bill from Norwich Union stated 'our policy holder is responsible for VAT and £250 excess'. A year later the leased company (RAC legal services - fleet claims) are demanding the £250 excess from her!

Is this possible?

Yes, I am claiming for the very same thing from the woman that ran in to the back of my fiancee, we have had to pay £550 excess direct to the garage, the insurers paid the remaining £350.

MarkyMarkD

Adpro

Either your wife's motivations were wrongly founded, or you are not explaining the situation correctly.

If your wife had an accident in her colleague's car then she's required to notify her own insurers of the accident irrespective of who pays for the damage and irrespective of who was at fault.

So settling the claim cost "to same her no claims bonus" was misguided. In point of fact, it wouldn't have affected her no claims bonus - as it wasn't a claim against her policy - but it WOULD possibly affect her premium, as it's an accident which she was involved in, and it SHOULD be disclosed.

And, given that she wanted to settle the claim cost, it was wrong of NU to ask her to pay the cost net of the VAT and the excess - they should have asked her for the full amount.

Given that the lease company have now realised NU's mistake, I don't see any grounds for her not paying up.

And please, get her to disclose the accident to her own insurers as otherwise she is at risk of invalidating her insurance. Given that NU clearly know who she is and where she lives, there is every chance of the accident being recorded on NU's (and the insurance industry's) claims database.

Astaroth

I think the OP meant that they took it out as in totaled it rather than took it out for a drive.

It was totally correct of NU to ask her to pay the repairs net of VAT and excess. An insurance company only recovers their own costs, the policyholders legal expenses cover will recover the persons out of pocket expenses such as the excess.... if the person is VAT registered they have to claim that back from HMRC as normal.

MarkyMarkD

Well, if "take out" means that, then I agree. Thanks, Astaroth. I couldn't really understand what was going on in the original post.