Accident Claim Advice

L-Jay

Hi, I'm hoping that someone with much more knowledge than me can help.
I was involved in an accident last week, I was stationary at traffic lights (4th car in queue), a car was pulling up slowly behind me when the car behind them failed to stop. Consequently they were shunted into me, I managed to avoid contact with the car in front.
My car is a 1996 VW Polo, cheap and cheerful but has seen me right for the past 3 years. The damage to me looks to be cosmetic (although I'm clearly no mechanic), my insurance are sending someone to assess the damage later in the week.. My insurance mentioned the dreaded "possible right-off" when I spoke to them, my excess is £500. Anyhow, this is all new to me - should my car be written off, what next?

Stooby2

Firstly, your excess should be paid by the car that caused the crash as unless there was a very good reason, crashing into the rear of another vehicle will be down to them. The legal services part of your insurance should recover it for you.

As for the write-off, if it is only cosmetic and the car is otherwise safe to drive, you can "buy it back" for a percentage of the write off value you'll get for it. Then you can fix the bits that need doing, get it re-mot'd and carry on using it.

The best bet would be to ring your insurance company and speak to them about the options and get some advice.

vaio

A '96 Polo will be written off with any damage and, given your £500 excess, you will end up with about nothing back from your insurer until the liability issue is resolved and your excess gets repaid.

More importantly some policies end (with no refund) if a total loss claim is made so you can also lose the remainder of your cover.

Read your policy and have a think about these points, as it might be worth cancelling your claim with your own insurer and claiming direct from the at fault party.

If you have legal cover they will probably assist with that, if you don't then you should be able to find a claims handler/credit hire firm who will look after you (but expect lots of pressure to pursue a PI claim too)

L-Jay

Thanks both of you for taking the time to respond, I do have legal cover and the person who hit my car is with the same insurance company as me - I'm hoping that that will help!?!

vaio

Shouldn't make any difference, you can still claim directly against them as an innocent third party rather than policy holder

Still read your policy, see what it says about what happens to the policy when a total loss pay out is made.