Car insurance trouble

paul1958_2

In December 2014 I had a minor knock I my car I ran into the back of another vehicle.Very minor damage was caused but we swapped
Details,ie names,addresses and car registration numbers.
I heard nothing until yesterday when I recieved my insurance renewal and it said that a claim had been made on my insurance by the third party.
When I had the knock I told the person that if she got a quote I would pay cash to have it repaired,as I did not hear anything I thought that she hadn't bothered as it was minor damage.

My problem is that I was never contacted by anyone to confirm that an incident had occurred
Surely my insurance company have to contact me to confirm that there had been an accident,otherwise anyone could call Their insurance company and claim they had been hit by anyone they choose.

I have never been involved with insurance claims before so am I right ? My insurance company should confirm details?

Any advice would be welcome as I don't know what to do.

Retrogamer

Did you notify your insurance company of the accident for recording purposes?

They would normally contact you for your side of the story before paying out on an accident claim but you might be in an awkward position to ask them why they paid out if you never reported the accident.

paul1958_2

I didn't report the accident as it was very minor and I asked the person to get a quote so that I could pay cash for any repairs.

Retrogamer

I guess you could phone them and ask them why they never made an effort to contact you regarding the claim but they may ask you the same thing.

Insurance companies should notify you of any claims and discuss these with you, but you should do the same to them with accidents.

Astronaughtwannabe

Insurers have the right of subrogation, or put simply - the right to settle the claim as they see fit.

As they are obligated to, they fulfilled that obligation in paying the claim.

rs65

paul1958 wrote: »

Any advice would be welcome as I don't know what to do.

Not much you can do.

They must have had adequate evidence that you were involved and caused the accident, which you are not disputing.

Pretty pointless arguing that they should have contacted you as you not contacting them is a breach of your policy conditions. They could have refused to renew, or even cancelled the policy, if they wanted to.

Aretnap

Th insurance company has the right to settle the claim as they see fit - if you read the small print of your policy documents you'll see that they're allowed to settle any and all claims on your behalf.

Ordinarily they'd want to get your side of the story first, not so much because they're obliged to, but because they don't want to pay out more claims than they have to. However if the third party is only asking for a small amount of money, they might well judge that it's better to settle as quickly as possible rather than delay things while they try to get in touch with you and risk th third party going to an accident management company who'll inflate the repair costs, add an expensive hire car to the claim and encourage her to make a dubious personal injury claim.

Not informing you at all, even after the event, sounds like rather poor customer service though.mhowever if you didn't inform them of the accident you're not on entirely solid ground yourself.

rs65

Astronaughtwannabe wrote: »

Insurers have the right of subrogation, or put simply - the right to settle the claim as they see fit.

Subrogation is the right to recover, but they also have the right to handle a claim as they see fit.

Retrogamer

Astronaughtwannabe wrote: »

Insurers have the right of subrogation, or put simply - the right to settle the claim as they see fit.

As they are obligated to, they fulfilled that obligation in paying the claim.

It does seem strange for the insurance company to pay out though without checking with their customer.
Can you imagine if someone reveresed into a wall, then claimed some
random person drove into them who the have the name and address of and the insurance paid out without checking or verifying their story.

Astronaughtwannabe

Plus insurers only have 14 days I believe to accept or reject liability under current regulation, so if you hadn't notified them of the bump then they possibly thought you'd procrastinate and take them over that time limit. I can see them thinking it's better just to pay.

Astronaughtwannabe

Retrogamer wrote: »

It does seem strange for the insurance company to pay out though without checking with their customer.
Can you imagine if someone reveresed into a wall, then claimed some
random person drove into them who the have the name and address of and the insurance paid out without checking or verifying their story.

I doubt they'd not made some kind of attempt to contact the insured.