Insurance Excess

tim9966

My car was hit at low speed by another car which has rolled into me. My car was stopped, and the other car was doing less than 5 mph.

My car had some damage to the bumper which I think will need a full respray of the bumper, but I think this will still cost less than the insurance excess of £350.

How does this work as the other driver wants to go through insurance rather then just pay a body shop directly to repair the damage?

Mr_Mink

You're best off contacting the other party's insurance provider and making the arrangements. Then notify your own insurance of the prang but don't make a claim. That leaves you with a fixed car and no excess to pay. On a more sour note, even a no fault accident could affect your insurance premiums going forwards, but hopefully it won't be by much.

Ultrasonic

tim9966 wrote: »

My car had some damage to the bumper which I think will need a full respray of the bumper, but I think this will still cost less than the insurance excess of £350.

Your excess is something that you would pay for a claim that you make against your own insurance. In this case, provided the other driver accepts responsibility (or is deemed responsible) then it will be their insurance paying for the repair and there will be zero cost to you. Except for possibly a small increase in future insurance premiums as mentioned above, although the impact on my insurance from a very similar incident to your was minimal (<£5 on a £250 premium).

londonTiger

Ultrasonic wrote: »

Your excess is something that you would pay for a claim that you make against your own insurance. In this case, provided the other driver accepts responsibility (or is deemed responsible) then it will be their insurance paying for the repair and there will be zero cost to you. Except for possibly a small increase in future insurance premiums as mentioned above, although the impact on my insurance from a very similar incident to your was minimal (<£5 on a £250 premium).

so your increase was £5 on renewal? Perhaps your premium would have gone down by £20 if you didn't have that accident. so it actually cost you £25.

£25 is 10% of £250. So pretty substantial difference.

All hypothentical though.

OddballJamie

Or of course Ultrasonic would've got a quote with and without the claim declared to see the difference.

When I'm getting quotes, once I've found a good company with a fair price (been Tesco last three years). I vary my details several times to see what works out best for me.
For example last time I found that stating I do 8k gave a £5 reduction over 7k, whereas I actually do close to 5k. Adding business miles didn't change it, neither did when I took off a non fault accident I had a couple of years ago (I declared it, just wanted to see the difference).

Playing with the excess is interesting too. Dropping it down from 200 to 100 gave an increase of less than £3, but 100 to 50 was a £25 increase.

Ultrasonic

londonTiger wrote: »

so your increase was £5 on renewal? ...

No. The extra cost to me due to the no fault claim was about £5. As OddballJamie suggested, I got quotes with and without declaring the incident for interest only, but obviously took a policy with it declared. My insurance this year was cheaper than last year, but then so is most people's.