Insurance repair / hire car

ajsexton

Hi,

I have a couple of questions after yesterday evening, when someone drove into the back of my car.

Exchanged details and due to the low speed of impact and minimal apparent external damage I started to drive home, it was then immediately apparent something was wrong, though I am hoping that its just a loose exhaust as its terribly noisy when accelerating at all now.

Rang insurance when home to inform and arrange for my car to be inspected/repaired as necessary.

Are the following events normal?

Garage rang me this morning to say they didn't have a courtesy car available until tomorrow afternoon, but could put me through to Enterprise no fault team to arrange a suitable hire car against 3rd party's insurance .

I took from the way they were talking that my car would still be collected today, but when I rang back to find out when they said they'd always claimed pick up tomorrow afternoon. is this common? Id have thought they'd have collected same day as they rang me about 10am this morning.

Enterprise no fault team collected details of the accident to check the insurance of the at fault driver, I stated that I wasn't happy to drive my car with the noise it was making, which made it un-driveable in my eyes.

The local enterprise place then rang me, said they were checking what they could get and would ring me back within the hour. After 2 hours I have just rang them back and they said, yes we've just arranged a suitable car, we'll pick you up at 5.30 tonight bring you to the depot and sort the paperwork.

Having never been in this situation before does this seem normal in terms of events and timescales?



Also I had a car seat in my car, do I need to get it replaced and do I get my insurers to deal with that too?

Thanks for any help.

Quentin

The timescales seem reasonable.

You can see what your insurer says about replacing the child seat.

If they don't cover replacement then diy and add the cost onto your uninsured losses to pursue the third party for

forgotmyname

Low speed impact the seat will be fine. If it was a fairly big impact where the airbags went off then i would replace instantly.

Was the seat in use at the time also?

ajsexton

Thankfully the seat wasnt in use at the time as I was returning from work.

ajsexton

Update::

Got call from garage - damage to rear bumper and damage to front of exhaust

Insurers have refused to pay for the exhaust repairs as they say its likely to be from prior to the accident... any suggestions on how best to contest this decision? as my car didn't sound like a boy racer car prior to the accident

Quentin

Get your own engineer to do a report. Then take it from the findings.

(Assuming your exhaust isn't old, and the risk/benefit ratio of cost of exhaust v cost of independent report makes it worthwhile)

ajsexton

Thank you for the quick reply.

Its an 07 plate VW polo and after ringing the insurance back and them ringing the garage again, they said they believed it be wear and tear as the exhaust is corroded the entire length..

Is it worth getting an different engineers report do you think?

Any one with an idea how much it would cost to do an exhaust replacement?

Quentin

Get a quote off a local exhaust centre

If it's the original exhaust give up on spending money trying to prove its not wear and tear

ajsexton

Thanks Quentin, appreciate the candidness

Obviously very annoyed about the whole situation but looks like Ill just have to pay for that repair out of my own pocket ...

ajsexton

Oh and I'm going down the financial loss route for the car seat as it wasn't a cheap one, as to replace now would be in the region of 300 like for like (it was less than 9 months old)

Quentin

If you mean that you are replacing the seat and then intend adding this to your uninsured losses claim then check it 'needs' replacement.

Insurers aren't bound to pay up for replacement - it does depend on the severity/circs of the bump as to whether it 'needs' replacement.

Eg very low speed/no child in seat

(Though you may still prefer to be safe than sorry and risk getting it knocked back by the third party)