Car Insurance Excess

Dec72

Hi


First time poster, so apologies if not right area...!


I am concerned about a Motor Insurance claim and wondered if anybody could possibly help?


On the 12th June whilst driving around a bend, I was hit by a car coming in the opposite direction, that disregarded the bend and continued into my car. The driver was an elderly man who seemed very confused and admitted to not knowing the road, and thought he could continue straight on! My daughter was with me and she was badly shaken up by the collision - no injury thankfully!


A witness volunteered to give a statement, and I exchanged details with the 3rd party.


I made a claim and then we had to pay the excess of £250 for repair. My Insurers have not had a response from either the witness or the 3rd party and are now saying that very often accidents on bends are not successfully concluded.


I feel very frustrated that the other driver has had no inconvenience and that I have not only had to pay out but I had my daughter with me in the car who received a real fright from his actions! Please advise on how I can pursue the costs of the excess as this frankly seems rather unjust! Thank you

InsideInsurance

How have they not been inconvenienced? They also have their claim to make and excess to pay. Now arguably its right that they should be inconvenienced but that's another matter.

These things take time, your insurers should be chasing both the third party insurers and the witness - though with the latter they need to be a little more cautious.

Unfortunately far too many companies like doing these things by sending out system generated letters and then diarying on for a month rather than actually picking up the phone. So you have letters blindly being sent to the TPI's head office, then having to go through mail processes, resent to the office handling the claim, back through the mail system, sit in a backlog waiting for it to be looked at. Their insurer may then send a letter out to their customer and diary it on a month. Then wait for their customer to reply, send a chaser letter maybe, once they get a reply it sits in the queue again and finally they send a response back to your insurer but then it sits in their backlog.

Chase your insurers, get actual updates... have they spoken to the TPI or not? Has the TPI spoken to their customer or not? Is liability in dispute or not? When do they next intend to speak to the TPI if the TP hadnt contacted their insurers yet? etc etc

Dec72

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.


Yes, good point that the 3rd party will have been inconvenienced - but you can understand my frustration as the innocent party...which is why I asked for advice on procedures.


My insurer said they couldn't get through to the TPI!! I think the witness is key and sadly, by them nor replying I may end up out of pocket

InsideInsurance

Dec72 wrote: »

My insurer said they couldn't get through to the TPI!! I think the witness is key and sadly, by them nor replying I may end up out of pocket

Hence why I say to keep on at them. For a non-injury claims handler they could have several hundred open cases in their name (I am sure that before I was in PI it was about 600 per person) and so sitting listening to hold music for 30 minutes to get through to the TPI isnt always possible.

As you get more experienced your ability to negotiate or knowledge of case law does improve. To be honest, creating your list of useful telephone numbers for each insurer etc to avoid call queues is just as important at making you a better handler.

Ideally the TP will admit they made the mistake and the witness will be unnecessary. Thankfully some people are honest but of cause those simple straight through cases dont tend to get reported on forums etc and so a skewed picture of the world gets reported. Likewise as a former disputed liability case handler I saw many more cases where people changed their story (according to our customer) than say my former colleagues in Recoveries which dealt with cases where the TP admitted liability.