Hit brick wall with car - possible damage and who to tell?

MysteryMe

arcon5 wrote: »

Unfortunately it's due to peoples attitudes when incidents are reported that more and more people choose to not stop. How many posts do we see where people have had extremely minor incidents which have been blown well out of proportion by the TP whom have seen the situation as nothing less than a cash cow!

The dishonesty starts when the drivers you appear to sympathise with damage other people's cars / property and then run away thinking they got away with it.

There is no self defined level of damage that can be caused before deciding to abide by the law of the land. If you cause damage to an unattended vehicle you report it.

The damage caused to my car wasn't minor and I'm glad I had a decent person do the right thing to help me. I could have been really unlucky and had someone with your mindset there instead.

Hintza

Spicy_McHaggis wrote: »

You should inform your insurance, but it's up to you whether you breach the policy conditions or not.

Would you?

jj42

Back on topic

I spoke to the local police force to report possible damage to the wall and to the insurance company (in case it invalidated my policy).

Thanks for the advice.

Hintza

jj42 wrote: »

Back on topic

I spoke to the local police force to report possible damage to the wall and to the insurance company (in case it invalidated my policy).

Thanks for the advice.

Well done that will cost you £500 - £2,000 over the next five years.

Spicy_McHaggis

Hintza wrote: »

Would you?

Does it matter what I would do?

That's not what the OP asked, he asked what should be done.

InsideInsurance

arcon5 wrote: »

How many posts do we see where people have had extremely minor incidents which have been blown well out of proportion by the TP whom have seen the situation as nothing less than a cash cow!

In general it is not the TP that is the main beneficiary nor them that are blowing this out of proportion but the businesses surrounding the claims business who see a way to make money out of it - credit hire, personal injury companies etc.

Assuming the other party is insured its also not them that are effected by this and indeed many of these companies, in particular the cold calling personal injury ones, are all too quick to point this out. Some almost make it sound like its your civic duty to claim as the insurer has a pot of money with your name on and if you dont claim it well it just goes on champagne and strippers at the annual party. One poster in the Insurance Forum was even told that the insurer could avoid paying corporation tax if they DIDNT make a personal injury claim to get the money.

On a separate note, many people have very little idea on the cost of repairing a car and especially when you are talking about at franchise dealer rates.

Hintza

InsideInsurance wrote: »

On a separate note, many people have very little idea on the cost of repairing a car and especially when you are talking about at franchise dealer rates.

Panda written off in the summer. Insurer deem damage to be £2,200.

Cost to repair at local mates rates body shop £500-£600 (of which £300 is labour).

Cost to get it back on the road until MOT expires £40. New headlamp and a big hammer.

MOT expires next week so it went for an MOT (fail) and have decided to call it a day on the old car. :A

Another copart special on the way

jj42

Hintza wrote: »

Well done that will cost you £500 - £2,000 over the next five years.

Annoying but I'd rather stay on the right side of the law, and my insurance company, in this instance.

InsideInsurance

Hintza wrote: »

Panda written off in the summer. Insurer deem damage to be £2,200

Cost to repair at local mates rates body shop £500-£600

Unfortunately tell someone that their BMW has to go to a guy who does "mates rates" level of labour charges and will be fixing their car with a hammer and a spare headlamp and you'll be swamped by complaints before you can even say FOS

Insurers get enough complaints with the level of bodyshops/ coachworks they do use on their network repairers without going to a cash in hand type place. Many do try to exercise their rights to go to their local Ford, BMW, Fiat garage even though most of these subcontract body works out to the same coachworks that the insurer was suggesting.

Going back to what I was responding to in the first place, I doubt that many of these claimants/ Third Parties have agreed a backhander from their local BMW garage just there are extra mouths to feed in the food chain, warranties have to be given, taxes charged, credit risk taken into account given insurers poor track record of paying bills etc. The instead have bought into BMW & co's statements/ claims that they must do all repairs to maintain warranties/ only they are good enough to do the repairs etc.

With my front wing damage Mercedes quote £2k, local bodyshop quote £1.8k and local dents away type person £400 - unfortunately dont have any mates in the trade to get mates rates from anyone - but the dents away guy did say it ended up taking more than twice as long as he'd estimated and his paintshop had to do the respray twice as the colour code isnt unique and the first one was wrong.