Offered compensation, do i take the first offer?

Markoo_2

This is from a car accident i had a couple of years ago, initially i was offered £1000 withing a couple of weeks of making a claim which im told these days is the basic amount everybody gets offered so not really considered an offer. This was not close to what i would expect given the injury's i had.

Anyway i have now received a letter with another offer which i think is reasonable however my solicitor states in the letter that they think it would be worth making a counter offer of slightly more.

I have just tried to ring my solicitor to discuss this but they are out of the office until next monday.

I was wondering if anybody could advise me on what the process of a counter offer is? If i make a counter offer does this current offer become void? or will i still be able to take this offer if they don't agree to the counter offer?

Nasqueron

Ask the solicitor or a colleague - they are being paid for this job, they can do their job!

My understanding from a similar situation is that if the solicitor recommends the amount, take it - if you gamble on going for more and end up losing in court you will end up with the legal bills but certainly if the first amount is low and solicitor believes it is too low then go with their experience.

OnanTheBarbarian

It will generally be the case that if a counter offer is made by you (your solicitor), the worst that happens is the third party offer is still on the table if your counter offer is rejected by them. So if they reject your counter offer, their offer is still available for acceptance.

So pretty much a nothing to lose situation.

(I do this for a living by the way)

sofiar

I was always told to never accept the first offer

Markoo_2

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

It will generally be the case that if a counter offer is made by you (your solicitor), the worst that happens is the third party offer is still on the table if your counter offer is rejected by them. So if they reject your counter offer, their offer is still available for acceptance.

So pretty much a nothing to lose situation.

(I do this for a living by the way)

Thanks for that, The claim is only 4 weeks away from its third anniversary and would like this settled before going to court and i assume the third party would also. Do you know how quickly they usually respond to a counter offer and is there a time limit for them to do so?

InsideInsurance

Markoo wrote: »

I was wondering if anybody could advise me on what the process of a counter offer is? If i make a counter offer does this current offer become void? or will i still be able to take this offer if they don't agree to the counter offer?

Your representative contacts the other side saying the offer is to low and it should be £X instead because of X, Y and Z.

A counter offer doesnt invalidate the original offer. In theory an offer can be withdrawn at any time but in practice it is very rare for an offer to be withdrawn due to a counter offer.

InsideInsurance

Markoo wrote: »

Do you know how quickly they usually respond to a counter offer and is there a time limit for them to do so?

How longs a piece of string?

There are many factors from backlog, handling authority, if the new value is within a tolerance of their estimate etc.