Honesty (sometimes) pays

Legacy_user

I heard a heart-warming story yesterday.
The son of a friend of ours scraped another car and did minor damage. He admitted it was his fault, and his mother agreed with the other driver to settle up privately and not involve insurers.
The other driver was so impressed by the boy's candour and honesty, she asked what he did, and hearing that he was unemployed she immediately offered him a job.

She runs a successful farm cheese-making business, and was looking for someone to join the small team.

I know the advice, don't admit liability, don't try and do deals, pass it to the insurers, etc. But this time, by breaking the rules, he got a job.

McKneff

On this occasion he has got away with it, but, in future it is in the terms ad conditions of every insurance company that you inform them of any incident, whether at fault or not. Not doing that makes you in breach of contract and your policy can be voided and have far reaching effects for years.
Just let him know for future reference.

And of course, I have to say good luck to him.

Quentin

All parties in this "heart-warming" tale have done is demonstrate their dishonesty!

At least they all have something on each other to use if needed in the future, as this dishonesty will continue as they will all have to lie for years when applying to insurers for quotes and policies.

Dangermac

McKneff wrote: »

On this occasion he has got away with it, but, in future it is in the terms ad conditions of every insurance company that you inform them of any incident, whether at fault or not. Not doing that makes you in breach of contract and your policy can be voided and have far reaching effects for years.
Just let him know for future reference.

And of course, I have to say good luck to him.

Extremely unlikely, I would say. If you're clearly to blame, then I dont think the most unreasonable insurer could blame you for apologising for your mistake.

DM

System

Quentin wrote: »

demonstrate their dishonesty!

I think you need to be a little more discerning and develop a sense of proportion in your use of words.
If on a dishonesty scale of 0-100, 100 = defrauding a bank of billions of pounds, and 0 = so honest you had to think for 10 minutes before replying "fine thanks, how are you?" to a greeting, for fear your answer might not be technically and literally true, then I think telling a little white lie to a greedy insurance company might rate as, perhaps 1?

Also, of course, you have missed the point of the anecdote, which is that on this occasion, honesty has paid off spectacularly.

McKneff

So every time now when either of those people are loking for insurance and they are asked 'have you ever had an accident, whether it was your fault or not' they will have to remember to answer 'no' which is dishonest, if they come up with a 'yes' then the shoite will really hit the fan for both of them for many years to come.

And yes, we did get the point of the anecdote. I'm not stupid and I'm confident that Quentin isnt.

pvt

So is there some kind of threshold for what's reportable and what's not?

If my 3-year-old son rides his scooter into the rear corner of my car and cracks the lens on the rear light cluster, and I replace it, should I report that to my insurer?

If I brush my open ski jacket against the car and scratch the paintwork with the zip, then rub that scratch out with T-Cut. Do I report that?

A driver loses control and hits a row of parked cars head-on and concertenas six of them. Mine's the sixth one and there is no evidence of any damage to it from the impact. Do I need to ring the Meerkats up?

What if drive into the garage and crush a plastic bucket between the car and workbench, causing no damage to the car but shattering the bucket. Is that reportable too?

How many of us are making false declarations and defrauding our insurance companies on this basis?

Edit - I should add - those are all things that I confess I've done, but more than 5 years ago :A

McKneff

I would presume it means incidents/accidents with another vehicle/person where a claim is possible.

It would be silly for the garage to ring your insurance company for compensation for a plastic bucket.

ACG

And his insurance will come down because hes no longer unemployed.

I agree its probably going to result in insurance fraud (technically) but it is common sense. Its an accident, nobody is hurt, its easily rectified - by putting a claim it causes more problems than it solves.

Christopher7

I can't believe some of these comments. In the real world insurance companies don't want to know about claims that are settled privately or where there is no damage as they have to employ people to record these and create files, all of which costs them money.

vaio

Christopher7 wrote: »

I can't believe some of these comments. In the real world insurance companies don't want to know about claims that are settled privately or where there is no damage as they have to employ people to record these and create files, all of which costs them money.

but I suspect not as much as it makes from loading premiums from those who answer honestly.

Anyway, if they don't want to know about "about claims that are settled privately or where there is no damage" all they need to do is stop asking about them