Motor insurance claim - other parties fault

weirdbeardmt

Hi all,

I have motorbike that was damaged by a 3rd party. It's all been fine to date and their insurance company (Aviva) have been processing things no problem. However, it has taken a large amount of my time to organise and follow things through to do with the repairs and so on. I am a contractor and paid by the hour, so all the time that I have spent on this has meant I am out of pocket from lost work.

Is there likely to be any provision for inconvenience etc. caused to me as a result of this? I have kept a log of all time spent etc.

Thanks.

Quentin

You can claim lost earnings as a result of the incident. Put in your detailed claim to Aviva.

As far as inconvenience is concerned put in for compensation, though this may be harder to quantify. Hope for some gesture!

BertTheRaccoon

If you are essentially self-employed you are going to have to provide a massive raft of documentation such as income tax returns and profit & loss accounts.

All you can claim for here is your net loss, not lost gross income - which will ultimately be calculated from your declared earnings on the tax return.

The insurers will want to see also declared earnings & invoices for around 3 months pre-accident as well as covering the period you are saying you have lost out on. If you can't show an actual drop in earnings, then you won't likely get anything.

Put it this way, I have just put the phone down from Aviva whereby I represent a self-employed driving instructor, who wants to claim just £83 for some lost driving lessons as a result of being unable to take some lessons on the afternoon after a collision (because her car was damaged and the replacement car did not arrive until the following morning).

The insurers won't consider the lost income claim without a nauseating amount of paperwork and I suspect you will get the same treatment.

Also, be mindful of the fact that you can't claim for lost income whilst putting together the paperwork to prove you claim.

Finally, the "general inconvenience" item of claim is likely to be refused by the insurers on account of a case called Taylor v Browne [1995] CLY 1842- at best, they may offer you £25 as a "gesture" but I would not dwell on this item of claim if Aviva won't deal with you.

weirdbeardmt

OK thanks. Have sent something through to them.

weirdbeardmt

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

If you are essentially self-employed you are going to have to provide a massive raft of documentation such as income tax returns and profit & loss accounts.

All you can claim for here is your net loss, not lost gross income - which will ultimately be calculated from your declared earnings on the tax return.

The insurers will want to see also declared earnings & invoices for around 3 months pre-accident as well as covering the period you are saying you have lost out on. If you can't show an actual drop in earnings, then you won't likely get anything.

Put it this way, I have just put the phone down from Aviva whereby I represent a self-employed driving instructor, who wants to claim just £83 for some lost driving lessons as a result of being unable to take some lessons on the afternoon after a collision (because her car was damaged and the replacement car did not arrive until the following morning).

The insurers won't consider the lost income claim without a nauseating amount of paperwork and I suspect you will get the same treatment.

Also, be mindful of the fact that you can't claim for lost income whilst putting together the paperwork to prove you claim.

Finally, the "general inconvenience" item of claim is likely to be refused by the insurers on account of a case called Taylor v Browne [1995] CLY 1842- at best, they may offer you £25 as a "gesture" but I would not dwell on this item of claim if Aviva won't deal with you.

OK thanks. Wait & see I guess. I imagine they will do their best to wriggle out of it.

weirdbeardmt

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

The insurers won't consider the lost income claim without a nauseating amount of paperwork and I suspect you will get the same treatment.

This is basically where I'm going with this. I submitted the initial claim, and the handler "having conferred with more senior colleagues" wanted to see documentary evidence of the loss. Have tried to explain how hard this will be - my earnings do vary month on month I'm essentially trying to recover 9 hours of work over a period of 3 months - my hours easily fluctuate 3 hours each month.

So will be very hard to demonstrate. Suspect it will go nowhere, which is annoying.

InsideInsurance

Do you have letters from your clients confirming you were booked for hours and didnt (a) turn up and (b) these hours were lost rather than just worked at a different time? Your contract should then give your hourly rate and your accounts/ tax returns what your profit ratio is