Changed insurance, had a crash within 30 minutes!

holidayhippo

Insured our car in January with Admeral, was paying yearly splitting the payments into two. One in January one in February.

January one was paid easily, the February one was a right farse. Gave them the details, said they would take it within within 48 hours never did, this happened twice (the money was in the account and I checked it daily) I got annoyed kept ringing blah blah, though I might aswell change the policy if they cant even take a payment right.

They sent me a letter saying that the insurance would expire on the 24th. Never contacted them, just let it expire. We we're off for the week so thought there was no rush, nobody was driving it. Today however my partner wanted to go to Manchester so, I called admeral made sure that there would be no problems going elsewhere and what about my refund, they said it was okay.

Did a quote online, car was insured at exactly 5.27pm he set off.

At 6.00pm someone clipped him from behind on the motorway, now the car is a write off.

Hastings, the new insurer said that as the system needed to refresh over night, we couldnt do a claim tonight, and they couldnt get a recovery truck to get him. FANTASTIC. They also said the national system said Admeral were still our insurer.

My question is - are we going to have a massive problem with insuring and having a crash so soon? Also we've chosen to pay on direct debit so have only paid the first payment.


Does it matter that the vehicle wasnt insured for a few days??

dacouch

Not the greatest choice using Hastings

londonTiger

they will probably regard this as suspicious. But you have done nothing wrong so don't allow them to intimidate you.

Hopefully it will just be done in the background - they'll request footage from the highways agency and get a statement from other party regarding time of accident etc.

did you speak to the other party and tell them about the fact that you just had your insurance 30 minutes ago and they need to keep an accurate record of time?

edit: hmm maybe that wouldn't be a good idea, if they're at fault and want to get nasty they could throw you under the bus and give an earlier time to make it difficult for you to claim against them.

Lum

Since your insurance situation is complex, and this person drove into the back of you, I would probably look into claiming directly off the other person's insurance. Find out who they are and give them a call to say "hey, your insured drove into the back of me"

arcon5

As above, report to your insurer for info purposes then liaise with third party insurer. It'll be much easier as I'm not sure how they can dispute a rear end collision

InsideInsurance

Assuming you declared that the policy was to start "today" then cover is instant.

Due to the fact it is so close to inception then additional checks may be made. What is more concerning and may raise more questions is that you didnt have insurance before this policy and so they will probe the time of the incident to ensure it is actually a case of you buying then having an accident rather than having an accident and then buying.

At the end of the day however, if this is a non-fault accident from your perspective then this can all be avoided by claiming directly from the TPI rather than from your policy.

Stooby2

I think you're going to have problems with Admiral. It sound like you bought a year's insurance with two payments. If that is correct, you still owe them the second payment. OK, it's their fault the payment didn't happen, but unless you tell them you want to cancel the policy and send the certificate back, the policy is still live. If you cancel it, there will in all likelihood, be a cancellation fee.

You need to ring Admiral today and get it sorted as it would appear you have two policies running on the car.

Hastings_Direct_company_representative

holidayhippo wrote: »

Insured our car in January with Admeral, was paying yearly splitting the payments into two. One in January one in February.

January one was paid easily, the February one was a right farse. Gave them the details, said they would take it within within 48 hours never did, this happened twice (the money was in the account and I checked it daily) I got annoyed kept ringing blah blah, though I might aswell change the policy if they cant even take a payment right.

They sent me a letter saying that the insurance would expire on the 24th. Never contacted them, just let it expire. We we're off for the week so thought there was no rush, nobody was driving it. Today however my partner wanted to go to Manchester so, I called admeral made sure that there would be no problems going elsewhere and what about my refund, they said it was okay.

Did a quote online, car was insured at exactly 5.27pm he set off.

At 6.00pm someone clipped him from behind on the motorway, now the car is a write off.

Hastings, the new insurer said that as the system needed to refresh over night, we couldnt do a claim tonight, and they couldnt get a recovery truck to get him. FANTASTIC. They also said the national system said Admeral were still our insurer.

My question is - are we going to have a massive problem with insuring and having a crash so soon? Also we've chosen to pay on direct debit so have only paid the first payment.


Does it matter that the vehicle wasnt insured for a few days??

Hi holidayhippo,

Thank you for taking the time to write about your experience. If there is anything that we can do to help please feel free to get in contact with us and we will be happy to check with our claims team. help@hastingsdirect.com

Many Thanks,
Jamie

Mark_Mark

londonTiger wrote: »

they will probably regard this as suspicious. But you have done nothing wrong so don't allow them to intimidate you.

Hopefully it will just be done in the background - they'll request footage from the highways agency and get a statement from other party regarding time of accident etc.

did you speak to the other party and tell them about the fact that you just had your insurance 30 minutes ago and they need to keep an accurate record of time?

edit: hmm maybe that wouldn't be a good idea, if they're at fault and want to get nasty they could throw you under the bus and give an earlier time to make it difficult for you to claim against them.

Time makes no difference if they're not at fault. Even if there was no cover on the ops vehicle third party would still pay.

OP, ignore this poster he fiddles his business insurance anyway.

holidayhippo

They were fine with taking the claim, I know it will probably take longer than usual as they'll prob into times more but we have nothing to hide.
This is just one of those sods law things.

The thing is, this chap who crashed into my partner clearly has no morals as we are now on day 3 and he still hasn't reported anything to his insurance and appears to have given us all a dud number.
I'm not sure how id sleep at night knowing I've caused someone to write off their car and I did nothing about it.

I've contacted the police to see if they have the same number and it was transferred wrong, my insurance has contacted his insurance Ive contacted his insurance blah blah

I know its a company car from the insurance company so was thinking if I can find the company the car belongs too, pass that number to our insurance and maybe get in touch with him that way.

Can anyone tell me how I could go about finding who the car belongs too?

Bollotom

Your insurer should be able to get details from DVLA.