Car insurance engineer says damage due to 2 incidents

benchammer

Hi!

Trying to make an insurance claim and having some issues. Any advice would be much appreciated!

I parked my car overnight on the street behind my house. The next morning the police knocked on my door to say it had been in an accident. A driver had parked behind me and awoke to find my car on his bonnet - so he called police and fire brigade, who removed it.

My car was damaged on the front passenger side wheel, wheel arch and the boot. The driver's wing mirror was hanging off and there was a dent in the rear wing panel on the driver's side.

The insurance engineer is now telling me that I need to claim for 2 incidents: a collision that knocked my car onto the car behind and vandalism to the mirror. This would mean that I have to pay 2 lots of excess!

Is the engineer correct? If not what can I do?

Thanks for your help!

dacouch

Was the mirror damaged in the accident or was it vandalised before or after the accident?

[Deleted User]

Surely the collision was the same act of vandalism as the mirror? Is he seriously suggesting that someone accidentally hit your car with enough force to ramp it up onto another car's bonnet, then rather than making a quick getaway decided to stop and randomly vandalize the mirror too?

Who is your insurer?

InsideInsurance

Its been a long day and I am really not getting my head day around where the damage is to give an opinion on if I agree or not.

I am guessing they are saying your parked vehicle was hit and shunted into the other vehicle hence the rear and front damage.

I think the "vandalism" aspect is a bit of a red herring but ignoring that word then generally they'd be saying that they cannot see how in one incident all of that damage could be caused. If they drove into your car, stopped, reversed to disentangle themselves and then drove off and hit your wing mirror on the way past then that would be two incidents.

Alternatively if there are is actual impact damage on the wingmirror from the top or somewhere else thats incompatible with the direction of approach from the TP then it may be actual vandalism. That isnt to say the person that kindly hit your car did the vandalism but possibly some other kind scrot that saw your car bashed up and decided to have a bit of fun with the wreck.

If you ignore the wingmirror is the car likely a write off? Is it worth claiming for the wing mirror?

To change their mind you effectively have to explain how all the damage could be a single impact

rs65

benchammer wrote: »

Is the engineer correct? If not what can I do?

He could be correct but hopefully you are with a sensible insurer. As far as you are concerned, you went to bed and your car was intact. Something happened during the night probably involving a collision with two vehicles and two emergency services removing your car.

No-one can say for certain what happened but to you, it was one incident.

OnanTheBarbarian

Presumably the car has been deemed repairable?

dacouch

rs65 wrote: »

He could be correct but hopefully you are with a sensible insurer. As far as you are concerned, you went to bed and your car was intact. Something happened during the night probably involving a collision with two vehicles and two emergency services removing your car.

No-one can say for certain what happened but to you, it was one incident.

It brings a new meaning to a claims handler asking if you checked your mirror before the accident

benchammer

InsideInsurance wrote: »

I think the "vandalism" aspect is a bit of a red herring but ignoring that word then generally they'd be saying that they cannot see how in one incident all of that damage could be caused. If they drove into your car, stopped, reversed to disentangle themselves and then drove off and hit your wing mirror on the way past then that would be two incidents.

Alternatively if there are is actual impact damage on the wingmirror from the top or somewhere else thats incompatible with the direction of approach from the TP then it may be actual vandalism. That isnt to say the person that kindly hit your car did the vandalism but possibly some other kind scrot that saw your car bashed up and decided to have a bit of fun with the wreck.

If you ignore the wingmirror is the car likely a write off? Is it worth claiming for the wing mirror?

To change their mind you effectively have to explain how all the damage could be a single impact

As the engineer is classifying it as 2 seperate incidents (shunt into the car behind and vandalism/unrelated damage), the damage from each incident isn't enough to write the car off. They've offered to repair the shunt damage or give me a cash settlement (which isn't enough to repair the shunt AND mirror damage).

As all the damage occured that night, I had assumed that the insurer would consider this a single claim and just repair all the damage. But looks like I was wrong!

I guess that to convince them it was a single incident, I would need to get a second opinion and then explain why the first opinion was wrong? I imagine that would take some doing!

InsideInsurance

For it to be a single incident it must be a continuous chain of events. So as a slightly similar case, I once had a claim from a customer who had tried to reverse out of a parking space and her description of the circumstances were:

"I was trying to reverse out of a very tight space, as I was going back I felt the car hit something and so drove forward and attempted it again. It was only on the 6th bump that I realised it was another car"

She went back and forth 6 times and so technically it was 6 claims.

Occasionally the ombudsman have made insurers take a more sympathetic approach. There was one case where a shed was attacked by animals which caused a lot of small holes in the walls. The insurer originally tried to claim each hole was a separate incident but the ombudsman over ruled them

benchammer wrote: »

I guess that to convince them it was a single incident, I would need to get a second opinion and then explain why the first opinion was wrong? I imagine that would take some doing!

In the first instance simply register a complaint with a plausible explanation of how all the damage was done by the one incident. A diagram showing pre accident positions and post accident inc areas of damage will help people understand whats happened.

benchammer

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Occasionally the ombudsman have made insurers take a more sympathetic approach. There was one case where a shed was attacked by animals which caused a lot of small holes in the walls. The insurer originally tried to claim each hole was a separate incident but the ombudsman over ruled them

That is pretty cheeky of the insurers! I'm glad they didn't get away with that one.

benchammer

InsideInsurance wrote: »

In the first instance simply register a complaint with a plausible explanation of how all the damage was done by the one incident. A diagram showing pre accident positions and post accident inc areas of damage will help people understand whats happened.

Just to clarify, do you mean make a complaint with the insurance company, or the ombudsman?

Thanks for your help with this, really usefulf info! Was struggling to find much on google.