3rd party lied about damage in contested fault claim

Pithaggy

Hi,

I’m currently in dispute with my car insurer.

In a nutshell there was a coming together of my car door with a third party, opened by my passenger. There were no other witnesses and we both contested fault.

The damage done to the other car was a shattered wing mirror. However, they have claimed for what is apparently extensive previously existing damage, stating it was caused by the wing mirror 'bouncing around'. I disputed this and was sent the photographs taken by the repairer for the third party.

I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s VERY apparent the claimed damage is incorrect. I strongly challenged this and apparently got an admission from the insurer that I was correct.

Now I have pushed the issue they have clammed up on me and the person handling my claim has said that someone else will now handle it. (Buck passing for a ‘difficult’ customer, do you think?)

So I have two issues.

-The attempt by the third party to load my account details with excessive repair costs, which may influence subsequent insurance quotes.

-The validity of the accident statement from the third party as a whole.

Does anyone have any advice?

Does the fact that the third party has lied give me a chance to challenge his accident report, on the basis that he is a provable liar and that for a ‘my word against his’ case, his ‘word’ has proven to be suspect.

Also, does the repair cost have any significant impact on future insurance quotes?

Any advice on how to proceed will be most welcome.

Quentin

Assuming you accept you were both to blame then not much mileage in challenging this as the cost of the claim won't have any impact on you.


Your impact is the fact you have a fault claim against you.

Pithaggy

Thats the problem. He is saying it's my fault and I his.

molerat

Opening a door into another vehicle is 99.99999999% the fault of the door opener, why is your case not so ?

Pithaggy

Massively excessive speed

TadleyBaggie

That doesn't absolve the door opener from blame.

Pithaggy

It's a BIG shame I had just disconnected my dash cam !

OK, a general point then.

Given that the third party has been excessive with his claim, my insurer is only going to investigate not paying for the existing damage on the third party car, with no other penalties.

Will it count against the third party in future and shouldn't the industry NOT encourage such claims?

OnanTheBarbarian

You are onto a loser arguing speed being the reason the other party is at fault.

Bottom line is this is a fault claim against you even if it ended up being a 50/50 case.

I would just let your insurers get on with dealing with the other party.

kev25v6

Your passenger opened their door into a parked car, how can this be the innocent owner of the damaged cars fault?? What they claim for isn't going to make any difference to you, a claim is a claim, whether it's for 300 quid or 3000quid. You pay your excess , the insurance fix the car and then you ask your passenger to pay the excess back to you.

Alt

kev25v6 wrote: »

Your passenger opened their door into a parked car, how can this be the innocent owner of the damaged cars fault?? What they claim for isn't going to make any difference to you, a claim is a claim, whether it's for 300 quid or 3000quid. You pay your excess , the insurance fix the car and then you ask your passenger to pay the excess back to you.

What are you talking about? Have you read the OP?


Alt

bod1467

kev25v6 wrote: »

Your passenger opened their door into a parked car

Where does the OP say the other car was parked? In fact the OP even makes reference to "massively excessive speed" ... quite difficult for a parked car to be doing that, and it's highly unlikely the OP's passenger opened the door while OP was doing "massively excessive speed", eh?