car accident claiming out with insurance

rich13348

Quentin wrote: »

The point that we are trying to make to you is that unless you know what you are doing when keeping your insurer in the dark the third party can cause you big problems by accepting your cash and still pursuing you via your insurer for all other losses and injury compensation.

I'm not keeping my insurer in the dark I have informed them as per my T&Cs. So to that end I might just refer them to my insurer and then the insurer car write off the pos car and he gets his money.

glentoran99

rich13348 wrote: »

I would say the stance the govt and insurers who are cracking down on dodgy injury claims might hamper that slightly.

You would think but I don't believe anything has changed on that front yet

InsideInsurance

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

A load of hype and rubbish you have read from the press.

Insurers are still making me daily pre-medical offers for my client's claims. So they remain happy to keep paying people's claims without seeing any medical evidence whatsoever.

The insurers aggravate a problem they then complain about.

Thats because they know that they can mitigate costs by limiting your fees, medical fees and kickbacks etc by curtailing the process.

Honestly, what percentage of your clients that you send to your pet medical experts come back with a report stating they sustained no injury at all or such a minor injury that when you factor in your costs, medical bills, clients compensation etc it is below the initial offer from the insurer?

Insurance is big business, it may disagree with something but its not the principles but the profit that it must ultimately stand by and whilst they disagree with all these "if there's blame there's a claim" mentality its ultimately cheaper to settle than contest in most cases.

It'd be a very brave company to think they can turn the tide of public thinking against getting compensation and accepting massive additional costs by fighting every claim to the bitter end for the next 5-10 years until they achieve their goal.

unheard

A couple of things claiming with insurance:

- their car will get assessed;

- sometimes the repair costs can be inflated (it's apparently a Regulatory Requirement to repair accident related damage - even if you say "don't bother with that repair - I'm happy to live with it");

- you WILL have to pay excess, I've been told recently that the insurance companies are NOT obliged to recover your excess that is paid. This is usually waived if fault is on the third party BUT fires in vehicles (ie electrical) are NOT fault-attributable (I found this out when a car next to mine caught on fire, and I had to pay the £100 excess, have my no claims discount affected, and generally out of pocket from work hours that the repairs and issues have caused me);

- your policy WILL go up, mine went up even though I had protected NCD. The NCD just reduces the policy, the claim seems to increase it, I'm not too sure if this is actually fair!

- the above is still affected if the incident is considered no-fault or lacks negligence on the third party;

- the insurance will not consider the time off work, trouble it causes or any other personal factors that are affected by the incident;

So, in effect, for claims less than or around your excess - go private and direct, otherwise you can get more than you're expecting (I've calculated that to have someone's car park next to mine and go up in flames has cost me in excess of £500 - £100 excess, £350 time off work to deal with, £40 childcare).

For several hundred pounds though, and the thought they are claiming for more than what the costs are, you will need to weigh up the costs of the insurance, check if you have protected NCD (just in case), and perhaps find out your own quotes for repairs to see the differences. Spray jobs and dents though are potentially the most expensive.

OnanTheBarbarian

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Thats because they know that they can mitigate costs by limiting your fees, medical fees and kickbacks etc by curtailing the process.

Honestly, what percentage of your clients that you send to your pet medical experts come back with a report stating they sustained no injury at all or such a minor injury that when you factor in your costs, medical bills, clients compensation etc it is below the initial offer from the insurer?

Insurance is big business, it may disagree with something but its not the principles but the profit that it must ultimately stand by and whilst they disagree with all these "if there's blame there's a claim" mentality its ultimately cheaper to settle than contest in most cases.

It'd be a very brave company to think they can turn the tide of public thinking against getting compensation and accepting massive additional costs by fighting every claim to the bitter end for the next 5-10 years until they achieve their goal.

There is no mitigation of my fees by settling the PI claim 2 days after notification for a pre-med offer compared to settling it 6 months later with medical reports. We still get the same fixed fees under the portal of £500 + VAT whether we have done 30m mins of work or 10 hours of work.

All they potentially save themselves is a medical report fee (also a fixed fee) of £180 + VAT.

What Kickbacks? - no kickbacks going on for medical fees any more since the introduction of Medco in April. We no longer have an ability to instruct the same medical agency or expert as a simple cab rank rule now applies.

A very very minute % come back with a med report saying no injury at all as they are sufficiently vetted before we send for a medical to make sure we are not all wasting each other's time by sending a client who has no discernible symptoms or that they recovered fully within day a week or so. If they tell me they recovered in a week, I tend to recommend there is no point proceeding due to proportionality and the time they would waste going for medicals relevant to the pittance they would achieve.


whilst they disagree with all these "if there's blame there's a claim" mentality

On the contrary, they seem to love it, why else do insurers keep buying or forming their own law firms to send their injured punters to? Answer: So they can gobble up costs and slash the throats of their fellow insurers, who will of course return the favour when their policyholder calls to report a non-fault claim.

Which brings me to repeat myself in that the insurance industry is in the eye of the !!!! storm they are busy moaning about, yet something they are exacerbating themselves on a daily basis by being the biggest feeders into the claims system, both to credit hire providers and claimant law firms.

It truly is a dysfunctional system where the true workings of the industry are rarely exposed, so the vitriol spouted by the industry and their mouthpiece at the ABI to the press just gets reported verbatim due to lazy journalism and the lack of any tangible evidence ever being released by the insurers as to what they are up to. They can just blame the "ambulance chasing lawyers" and claims management companies and nasty hire companies, yet the insurers are the biggest accounts for the lawyers and hire companies. Madness I tells ye!

I have no problem with pre-medical offers as sometimes it suits the circumstances of my client perfectly and in the event they don't we get a medical report, but......... the insurers really need to shut up about the completely over-exaggerated levels of fraud and "compensation culture" and woe is us sentiment when they have been discouraged by regulatory bodies (quite why they haven't been banned) from making pre-med offers, yet then chose to do so in abundance, often the offers are just a pure nuisance.

Case in question last week, my client has a suspected fractured sternum, the insures make a stupid pre-med offer of £800. To which I call them and ask if there is a digit missing from their offer, to be told no. So I am then duty bound to take my client's instructions on the offer, which is obviously rejected. Upon doing this, the girl on the other side increased it to £1000, again forcing me to take instructions, again rejected and then a further offer of £1250.00. Utter idiots just creating unnecessary work for everyone.

And breathe...........;)

glentoran99

unheard wrote: »

A couple of things claiming with insurance:

- their car will get assessed;

- sometimes the repair costs can be inflated (it's apparently a Regulatory Requirement to repair accident related damage - even if you say "don't bother with that repair - I'm happy to live with it");

- you WILL have to pay excess, I've been told recently that the insurance companies are NOT obliged to recover your excess that is paid. This is usually waived if fault is on the third party BUT fires in vehicles (ie electrical) are NOT fault-attributable (I found this out when a car next to mine caught on fire, and I had to pay the £100 excess, have my no claims discount affected, and generally out of pocket from work hours that the repairs and issues have caused me);

- your policy WILL go up, mine went up even though I had protected NCD. The NCD just reduces the policy, the claim seems to increase it, I'm not too sure if this is actually fair!

- the above is still affected if the incident is considered no-fault or lacks negligence on the third party;

- the insurance will not consider the time off work, trouble it causes or any other personal factors that are affected by the incident;

So, in effect, for claims less than or around your excess - go private and direct, otherwise you can get more than you're expecting (I've calculated that to have someone's car park next to mine and go up in flames has cost me in excess of £500 - £100 excess, £350 time off work to deal with, £40 childcare).

For several hundred pounds though, and the thought they are claiming for more than what the costs are, you will need to weigh up the costs of the insurance, check if you have protected NCD (just in case), and perhaps find out your own quotes for repairs to see the differences. Spray jobs and dents though are potentially the most expensive.

Think you've got the wrong end of the stick here, the OP was at fault so wont be paying any excess.


I have had fault and no fault claims in the last couple of years and my policy has NEVER gone up on the previous year after shopping around, with protected no claims,


I also haven't had to pay excess when my car was hit

rich13348

I am not claiming for damage to my car as it is minimal paint scrapping which can be polished out. I have been told by my insurance that there is no excess to be paid on 3rd party claims so not bothered. My no claims is not protected but insurance has said it will go from 3 to 1.