Insurance mess...advice please

sam1970

The hire car was paid for by my insurance who arranged every thing with the hire company and told me that they will recover their cost from the other insurer as they have admitted liability...there was no question of me paying later as the other insurer accepted liability and my wife did not sign any thing.. We only paid £100 excess waiver to the hire company and that was our choice

Iceweasel

One other thing - one way systems in private car parks count for nothing - they are advisory only.

I'm not questioning your statement that the other driver was at fault, but arrows on the ground and signs in a supermarket car park have no legal standing at all.

And yes insurance is very unfair.

My old mini was hit when parked by a driver who admitted liability and their insurance covered the costs of a new door - minus £100 for 'betterment' as my original door had a few scrapes and chips and the bottom edge was rusty.

No one wins - ever.

Good luck with your claim.

InsideInsurance

sam1970 wrote: »

The hire car was paid for by my insurance who arranged every thing with the hire company and told me that they will recover their cost from the other insurer as they have admitted liability...there was no question of me paying later as the other insurer accepted liability and my wife did not sign any thing.. We only paid £100 excess waiver to the hire company and that was our choice

Are you sure it was paid for by your insurers? It sounds like they sold your details to a credit hire car company and you had the car on credit with the hire car planning to bill the third party insurer.

I've never heard of an insurer providing a larger vehicle than the policy allows for out of their own pocket

You need to read the paperwork that you were given in connection with the car. Ideally this should have been done before accepting it but now is better than never. I suspect you will find its a credit agreement.

Most credit hire doesnt require you to repay them the unrecoverable element of it as long as your actions havent prejudiced the case and you didnt lie about the circumstances etc. This does vary by provider though

As to recovering any of it from the TPI, 50% of the TOTAL hire bill can be recovered from them if the case goes 50/50. So if the hire company gets 50% from them and 50% from you you cannot then claim 50% of that back from the TPI. If they bill you for the complete hire then you could get 50% back

As a note for the future, if you really need a larger vehicle than a Corsa then make sure you buy insurance that provides this as part of the policy itself thus avoiding any reimbursement issues if involved in a future claim. If you dont really need something bigger than a corsa then you may find you have more issues with the claim on the horizon

Car_54

Iceweasel wrote: »

One other thing - one way systems in private car parks count for nothing - they are advisory only.

I'm not questioning your statement that the other driver was at fault, but arrows on the ground and signs in a supermarket car park have no legal standing at all.

That is true in the sense that you could not be convicted for specific offences, e.g. ignoring a no-entry or give-way sign.

However, as it is a public place the Road Traffic Act applies, and ignoring the arrows could possibly bring a charge of careless driving, i.e. below the standard of a "competent and careful" driver.

sam1970

Unfortunately I cant find any paper work for the hire car(there was not many anyway..just one page my wife signed to show the condition of the car when we got it). What happened was that our insurance phoned us to say that their approved garage will collect our car on xx day and give us Ford Ka..we said it was too small for our needs..they said no problem as the accident was not our fault we can go for a bigger car and they will recover the cost from the other insurer. couple of hours later we received a phone call from the hire company saying that they have a car for us as instructed by our insurer.

sam1970

My other concern is we dont know what is daily rate for the hire car as we never asked (was not our problem)...knowing how insurance work on inflated prices I am very concerned...actually I was shocked last year to know that the cost of repair came to £4000 as I am sure it would have cost less than a £1000 in any local garage and took less than a week (instead of three weeks which obviously inflates the hire car bill further)

notanewuser

How on earth did a supermarket car park knock cause £4k worth of damage?!

sam1970

This is how the insurance works..and this is using their approved garage !!! it was shocking especially knowing that the value of the car is propably around £5000. I am sure that if it was our fault and they were paying for it they would have written it off as it does not make sense to pay £4000 to repair £5000 car but obviously they had the assurance that the other driver's insurance will be paying them

sam1970

I wonder if i do have a case to go to the ombudsman as the whole thing is very unfair...My wife was crying yesterday as she has not done any thing wrong but still got penalised..by the way..we were told by our insurer 3 months after our car was repaired that the other insurer changed their minds and denied liability and when they asked them why did they accept liability 3 months earlier they said because their driver had few accidents whitin a short period of time and they were looking at the wrong file when our insurer called them...wow..Firstly you would not run a corner shop in this incompetent manner and secondly what does it say about the other driver having frequent accidents?

tykesi

I'd be very sure of what you were provided with before even complaining to the insurer never mind the ombudsman.

You don't know on what basis the larger car was provided (credit hire etc) so you need to have all the facts before you go stamping your feet at anyone otherwise you'll be laughed out of the room!