Shop Window broken

Fishcake_Random

Joy of joys someone on a bike/scooter has taken the courner outside our shop to fast and gone through one of our main windows. The police have told us it will be covered by the persons insurance and have checked he is insured ect ect.
I was just wondering how it all works, do we pay for the window and then claim it back or is it up to the insurance comapany who fixes our window?
We have already had to pay out to get it boarded up as it is a busy street and we didn't want to risk any health and safety issues with the glass.
x x x

Pennywise

You need to be liaising with your insurance company. Usual practice is to do what they say and let them reclaim from the other party. Don't try a do it yourself approach. You may already have a problem by choosing your own firm to board it up - most insurers insist on only using their approved firms.

If you really don't want to involve your own insurance firm, then you need details of the biker's name, address and insurance details and you need to contact them immediately to get their instructions about what to do, i.e. whether you can choose your own glaziers (unlikely) or they'll tell you who to use.

Also be aware that you are required to "mitigate" or minimise your costs. The insurers would have every right to pay less than you claim if your actions have increased your costs, i.e. by choosing a more expensive repair firm if cheaper ones were available etc.

No doubt, you are also thinking about potential claim for loss of business, i.e. because customers don't know you're open, or because you've lost your window display, or if you have to close whilst it's repaired. Again, you have a duty to mitigate your losses, so they may expect you to get a "still open" banner printed and put up outside. They'll also need "proof" of loss of trade which is very hard to provide - you'd need very detailed figures showing your daily sales, day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, to help you prove that your sales this week are less than you'd have expected otherwise.

But, at the end of the day, talk to the insurers immediately and get their advice on what to do. They're helpful if given the chance but don't like it when people run off and do their own thing.

dacouch

If you have the registration number of the vehicle, you can find the name of the Insurers and contact number here https://www.askmid.com

Assuming the bike rider has informed their Insurers you can then give them a call and try and claim directly off them. Most Insurers will have glazers as suppliers and will arrange for the work to be carried out at their expense and also reimberse your boarding up expenses.

I would also ask for a quote to replace from the company who boarded up as depending on the price the Insurers may just tell you to go ahead with it and send in the invoice.

If you do the above, don't forget to inform your Insurers for their information.

The alternative is to do as pennywise suggests, however if you claim off your own Insurers you will need to pay your excess (Probably between £150 and £350) you would then (Normally) need to claim this back from the other Insurer yourself.