Car Insurance - Is this fair?

janash1

My son is 23. On may 30th he was pulling off a road traffic island onto a minor road when a van overtook him and knocked into his car causing damage to the drivers side wing, bumper and door.
He reported the accident straight away and gave the insurance company all of the details given by the other driver (he was in a company vehicle).
We were advised at the time not to drive the car because the wing was rubbing onto the tyre.
His insurance company initially said that the other people had 2 weeks to submit their details of the accident so that blame could be apportioned (my son feels that it the fault of the other driver - there were no witnesses).
We are now two months down the line and still being told by his insurance that we have to give the other driver more time (now we are being told it could take up to a year!!!!) to submit details of the accident. The other vehicle has been repaired.
Does anyone know if there are industry standards on how long anyone has to submit details following a collision? Surely, two months is excessive? Frankly, I feel that two weeks is more than adequate, but what do I know? I just thank God that the other person was insured, though I'm now starting to wonder if he would have been better off if the other person would not have been insured!

learningaboutinsurance

from my recollection of my accident, it took the the TPI 3 months to reply and that was only because i got the deatils of teh TPI from my insurers and contacted them myself who were unhelpful and managed to google the CEO name and head office number (the power of google) and started a complaint with me threatning to exposes the lazyness on the media. which i think was the reason it worked.

see if you can get the details of the TPI and contact them yourselfs and ask them to reply to your insurers straightway or does your son have fully comp if so get your insurers to pay on this and then once this has been settled with other insurer and your insurer has been paid your sons NCB will be reinstated if the blame lay with the TP driver it is found

InsideInsurance

Legally for non-injury cases there is up to 6 years before it gets statute bared. Reality is that things take more than most people consider reasonable but accidents like this tend to be resolved in something measured in months rather than years. It does take all the parties, including the insurers, to play ball and any one of them can be a weak link that causes delays.

olivermiles25

I think it is not fair for your child's car insurance

TDPIX

We're in the process of closing a similar claim (someone else acting like an idiot and hit our car whilst overtaking). No witnesses around so it was difficult to prove liability. It took over 6 months for the third party to provide any information whatsoever. In the end (as there were no witnesses) we agreed with our insurance company to settle 50/50 as the third party weren't playing ball and there were no witnesses, so it otherwise could have dragged on years and still ended up 50/50.

It's pretty annoying though - cases like this make it wonder what the point of insurance is.

dacouch

Does your son have Comprehensive Cover.

Are you claiming directly off his Insurance or have they palmed you off onto a claims management company who will claim off the other party but often won't do anything until the other party admits liability.

Who is he insured with?

janash1

My son does have comprehensive cover (at £1,000+ per year despite 3 years ncb). We are speaking with the insurance company direct. Am I allowed to say who he is insured with? Well, both he and his brother are insured with Churchill. I'm very disappointed with them to say the very least.