Parking damage, disappointed by police action

lazer-zxr

I parked my car at a park and ride car park.
As usual, I took a photograph of cars on either side. One was a bright red Audi.
Returned to my car 4 hours later, to see bright red paint, and dents and scrapes down both passenger side doors.
Went to the police about this.
They responded to say they can't do anything about prosecution, as the photograph and damage are merely circumstantial. I accept this, despite the paint match.

The thing that really riles me, is that they said if the offending car was local (Oxford), they would pop round for a look to check for any damage to it. However, as the offending car was at an address registered in Birmingham, they wouldn't ask the local police there to inspect it.

Am I right to feel a bit hard done by here?

As an aside, my insurance company are going to try and claim from the other parties.

neilmcl

You have every right to be annoyed but as you accept there is no evidence, other than circumstantial, that the car photographed was the car involved in the scrape therefore your local police aren't going to expend valuable resources by chasing another police authority to look into it.

Other than keeping an eye on the car park to see if said car returns the best thing you can do is leave it to your insurance or even find out their insurer via askmid.com and contact them directly.

Does the park and ride have CCTV and are the cameras overlooking your parking space?

lazer-zxr

Thanks for your reply.
The CCTV will be reviewed by my insurer. It is unlikely the 360deg camera was on my space at the time.

Unfortunately the car park is 300 miles from my home, we were in Oxford for a holiday.

It just seems, this, the first time I've ever needed the police, and they won't take a drive round to inspect a car. Grrr ... all those taxes paid etc etc.

Fat_Walt

lazer-zxr wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.
The CCTV will be reviewed by my insurer. It is unlikely the 360deg camera was on my space at the time.

Unfortunately the car park is 300 miles from my home, we were in Oxford for a holiday.

It just seems, this, the first time I've ever needed the police, and they won't take a drive round to inspect a car. Grrr ... all those taxes paid etc etc.

How are your insurance company going to secure the cctv?

I can see this ending up as an at fault claim for you.

neilmcl

lazer-zxr wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.
The CCTV will be reviewed by my insurer. It is unlikely the 360deg camera was on my space at the time.

Unfortunately the car park is 300 miles from my home, we were in Oxford for a holiday.

It just seems, this, the first time I've ever needed the police, and they won't take a drive round to inspect a car. Grrr ... all those taxes paid etc etc.

Still might be worth contacting his insurer directly and stating that you have pictures of his vehicle as well as cctv of the car park and you've contacted the police. You never know with all that he may come clean with his/her own insurer.

lazer-zxr

Fat_Walt wrote: »

I can see this ending up as an at fault claim for you.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how can I be "at fault" if I wasn't even in the vehicle?

neilmcl

lazer-zxr wrote: »

Maybe I'm missing something, but how can I be "at fault" if I wasn't even in the vehicle?

Unless your insurer can recover the costs of repair then all claims will be classed as "at fault". It's just how it works.

lazer-zxr

If the other parties insurer don't pay, I will not make a claim, but look to make right my car with my own money / contacts. I have a £300 insurance excess. I hope this would protect my insurance reputation / no claims.

Fat_Walt

lazer-zxr wrote: »

If the other parties insurer don't pay, I will not make a claim, but look to make right my car with my own money / contacts. I have a £300 insurance excess. I hope this would protect my insurance reputation / no claims.

That's up to you, but you'll still be declaring the incident for five years.

Aretnap

lazer-zxr wrote: »

Maybe I'm missing something, but how can I be "at fault" if I wasn't even in the vehicle?

Insurers use fault in a rather misleading way - if they recover their costs from another party it's classed as a non-fault claim; if they don't it's classed as at fault.

In a normal accident, this does pretty much correspond to "blame" - if the other driver was to blame (and you can prove it) they'll be able to reclaim all their costs from the other driver's insurance, and it will be a no-fault accident from your point of view.

However if the other driver can't be traced then there's nobody for your insurer to recover their costs from, so it gets recorded as a fault claim. Similarly if you have your car stolen, or if a tree falls on it, it will end up as a fault claim, even though there is probably no actual "blame" attached to you.

Some would think that classifying claims like this is unfair, but it does have a certain logic to it. At least whether or not your insurer recovers their costs is an objective question with a simple answer - while "blame" is a nebulous concept and two people can have very different views on who was to blame for an accident. Plus classifying them according to someone's view of whether you were to blame would open up various cans of worms - if you'd scraped the side of your car reversing out of your drive there'd be an incentive for you to claim that you'd actually left it in a car park and come back to find it had been hit by an unknown driver, if making that claim would keep your premium down in future. However I do agree that the use of the term "fault" is misleading, and it would be better if insurers used another form of words when classifying claims, eg "costs recovered/not recovered from third party".

forgotmyname

As above, even if you do not claim the incident needs to be declared for upto 5 years.