rearend shunt!

robotrobo

hi.
my nephew ran in to the back of a newish ford car causeing £750 damage to the bumper of the car.
He has admitted to the owner that he was at fault, the estimate as arrived & produced from the ford garage for £750 , the insurance companies are not yet involved as the owner as offered to let him pay the bill privately ,which is very decent of him.
the nephew will automatically lose his £200 excess & will probably have a lot higher premiums for a few years or so , can anyone advise the best way forward financially to go , there is no dispute between the two partys , infact it is very nice to be offered the alternative.My nephew as the money to pay if paying cash is the best route to take.
thankyou

gilbert_and_sullivan

Some will say you should inform the insurance anyway..which defeats the object of the exercise, but they do have a point, in case a belated injury claim arrives on the doorstep in 18 months time in which case the insurer being kept out of the loop isn't going to want to know and failing to disclose an event like this could have serious repercussions for future insuring.

All you can do is judge the character of the third party, there's still some decent people about who live in the real world, he's trusting your nephew to actually come up with the money and not deny all knowledge when push comes to shove, so each of the two parties are taking the other as men of their word, its gut feeling time here IMO.

Hope it works out well, though @ £750 it's probably borderline being worth going through the insurance unless nephew is paying silly premiums already.

neilmcl

robotrobo wrote: »

hi.
my nephew ran in to the back of a newish ford car causeing £750 damage to the bumper of the car.
He has admitted to the owner that he was at fault, the estimate as arrived & produced from the ford garage for £750 , the insurance companies are not yet involved as the owner as offered to let him pay the bill privately ,which is very decent of him.
the nephew will automatically lose his £200 excess & will probably have a lot higher premiums for a few years or so , can anyone advise the best way forward financially to go , there is no dispute between the two partys , infact it is very nice to be offered the alternative.My nephew as the money to pay if paying cash is the best route to take.
thankyou

Your nephew wont lose any excess unless he makes a claim for his own damage. He will, however, lose his current NCD entitlement for the year and possibly more if he's not protected and yes his premiums will rise. Yes, he is obliged to inform his insurer but that's left to up to him at the end of the day.

chickendipperbabe

I would go through the insurance if it was me with the risk of a possible personal injury claim in the future.

It's been known for body shops to sell customer's details to third parties such as accident management companies. Anyone can sound reasonable but the temptation of an easy few grand will be too much for some resist especially if they're being bombarded with calls telling them as much. This happened to me and we found out they actually got the details from the Nissan workshop doing the repairs, three years on we're still getting calls.

Shaka_Zulu

As Gilbert says this is getting on the marginal side, of course if he does go through insurance then the cost of repair will no doubt rise (not that that will really affect him) he will also cheese of the other party who will now have to wait for damaged to be assessed.

I would frantically have been doing some calculations to figure out the best course of action.

I would probably go down the repair it yourself route especially if a number of days have passed since the accident, I try and still believe that people will play fair with me if I play fair with them.

parking_question_chap

If they did later try it on couldnt your nephew just deny he was driving. Nobody would have any evidence to the contrary. For that reason I would get him to pay the repair bill in cash.

Astronaughtwannabe

And if he appeared in court as the result of a claim, would it be wise to lie to the judge?

glentoran99

Premium wont rise that much, and maybe not at all if you shop around, better safe than sorry and go through insurance, as someone said your obliged to inform them anyway, and they will ask "any accident claims or convictions in the last 5 years" is he willing to lie for the next five years?

im-lost

parking_question_chap wrote: »

If they did later try it on couldnt your nephew just deny he was driving. Nobody would have any evidence to the contrary. For that reason I would get him to pay the repair bill in cash.

Yeah, fraud and perjury, what great advice.

parking_question_chap

Astronaughtwannabe wrote: »

And if he appeared in court as the result of a claim, would it be wise to lie to the judge?

If the other side couldnt prove anything

chickendipperbabe

The other side could have taken photos of the damage, car that hit them and the OP's nephew on the sly with his phone or dash-cam.

In my opinion its not worth the risk.