Non Fault Car Accident 3rd Party Insurance Not Paying

redbughill

Good evening, appreciate some advise, my car was recently hit whilst parked up, the responsible driver was good enough to leave his details, soon after he reported the incident to his insurance & admitted liability. The next day I made contact with his insurance & they confirmed they are responsible & will deal with the claim.

Unfortunately after the incident the car refused to start, it was totally dead so it was recovered to a garage. Days later a insurance engineer inspected the car, authorized full body repairs (approx £4000) & advised the cars safety terminal had been deployed due to the impact which cuts off all power as a safety precaution & authorised the garage to replace the electrical component.

Later that week the garage replaced the electrical part as instructed by the insurance engineer, I then received a call from the garage telling the key is not recognised by the car & will not respond & do I have a spare key. I later rushed down with the spare & to my horror found the spare key does not work either! So my car is totally dead.

The garage assured me it will get repaired but have to report back to the insurance company. The insurance company later refused to pay for diagnostics & claimed it cannot be related to the accident. My argument was the car was driving just moments before I parked up & I used it daily to commute to work & back home, it cannot be coincidence that the car is totally dead after the accident. After weeks of several telephone calls they simply refused to get involved further with the electrics.

I had no option other than to pay for the electrical repairs myself to get the car running again, the garage didn’t want to proceed with body repairs as it was a dead car.

I ended paying just over £1000 myself for the electrics, one of the ecu’s went down & the garage was unable to get it going & advised I had no option other than to replace the ecu & reprogramme it. The insurance company paid for body damages & my hire car, however I am now trying to recover my £1000 I had to pay, I have written to them twice with copies of my invoice I have paid, the garage even provided copies of the bmw parts used which I have sent on to the insurance but they simply are stating it cannot have been caused by the accident.

Question is what do I do, I have already threatened them with legal action, do I go to a solicitor or make a claim through small claims court?

chanz4

mm very strange as cant see a bump deprogramming the keys

Bev_B

Do the repair garage agree the electrical issues were caused by the bump? if so get it in writing from them and send to the insurers if they still refuse to pay start small claims court proceedings.

redbughill

i have spoken to several bmw garages some say a power cut can cause a ecu to go down or a power surge from the explosive charge from the safety terminal may have damaged the ecu either way my car was drivable prior to the accident. some garages say the airbags can go off even when the car is turned off!

The insurance company are claiming bmw have confirmed with them this fault cannot be related to the accident.

redbughill

chanz4 wrote: »

mm very strange as cant see a bump deprogramming the keys

no keys didnt loose there programming, one of the ecu's failed to come back online from the power cut caused from the accident, its a safety feature on bmw's

InsideInsurance

redbughill wrote: »

no keys didnt loose there programming, one of the ecu's failed to come back online from the power cut caused from the accident, its a safety feature on bmw's

Sounds more like a cash generating feature on BMWs to me

At present you have their expert saying it isnt accident related and you on the phone saying it is. What you need to do is get a report from an engineer to confirm it is accident related and submit that.

As you are dealing with the Third Party insurer rather than your own you have no rights to escalate complaints so if they dont respond to the engineers report your next option is to send a letter before action and if that fails then to issue court proceedings against the Third Party and his insurers will defend it.

Quentin

InsideInsurance wrote: »

..... if that fails then to issue court proceedings against the Third Party and his insurers will defend it.

Before taking this advice, do seek legal advice on your chances of winning in court.

The judge will seemingly get 2 opposing "expert" opinions over this, so how will he/she decide?

Unless you win, you will have to pay all the court costs plus the allowable expenses of the defendant and the cost of expert reports, all of which won't be cheap over a claim for £1000. (eg the court costs alone for a hearing will be around £200, more if the claim is in excess of the £1000)

redbughill

I have sent on copies of the invoices from the bmw garage & copies of invoices of parts used from bmw & have sent a letter before action, they refused to pay.

My point is my car was running until it was hit, there own insurance engineer agreed to some of the electrics but than refused to pay for the failed computer which stopped the car from driving

Quentin

So now you are at the point where you either put up (ie issue a summons) or shut up!

As advised get proper legal advice on your chances before paying out for a court case.

InsideInsurance

Quentin wrote: »

Unless you win, you will have to pay all the court costs plus the allowable expenses of the defendant and the cost of expert reports, all of which won't be cheap over a claim for £1000. (eg the court costs alone for a hearing will be around £200, more if the claim is in excess of the £1000)

Why £1,000? If there is no personal injury then the small track (aka small claims court) limit is £10,000 now and as you can see from https://www.gov.uk/court-fees-what-they-are and https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/court-fees the court fees dont suddenly jump up materially at the 1k mark. If there was a PI or the judge deemed it complex enough to move into the Fast Track then there is a very large increase both in court costs and allowable expenses.


To the OP - from what you say, you have only provided them invoices for what work you have had done and not any evidence that the work was accident related. At present they have an "expert" saying its not accident related and a lay person saying it was then the odds are not in your favour.

If you search on here you will see a post from yesterday where a person had a convertible that stopped working after an accident and it was shown to be caused by corrosion in the wiring loom which clearly isnt accident related

Quentin

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Why £1,000?

I quoted the court costs for a claim of £1000 as that is the amount the OP stated he was out of pocket over this.

If he claims in excess of £1000, then the costs will be greater.

A claim for £1000 will cost the OP £200, a claim of say £1000.01 will cost £30 more (£230)

Understand now?