Car insurance claim - compensation?

1kellie123

In June 2014 I was hit by a lorry on the M6 which pulled out on me at 70mph, pretty scary stuff! When the accident happened the driver admitted fault and my car was collected by the insurance company and repaired. Upon return I noticed that when the car was traveling at over 60mph there was a knocking noise. I asked the garage to inspect the vehicle which they said was fine, twice, I told them that it seemed that the wheel was buckled, they disagreed. I then asked for an independent assessor to come and inspect the vehicle who then sent it to VW to be looked at again. They had the car for two weeks and said that they could not find a fault. It came back to me over Christmas 2014 then went back again where the guy at VW agreed to try a new wheel which rectified the problem. All of this was after 7 months of many phone calls, many appointments, visits and basically a whole heap of unwanted/unneeded stress. Does anyone know if I can claim any compensation for this from the insurance company?

paddyandstumpy

Playing devils advocate, if there was so much stress etc at the time, why has it take you till January 2017 to realise this, when the claim sounds like it was settled and the issue resolved in 2015...?

1kellie123

I hadn't considered claiming compensation as I didn't know you could. A friend recently mentioned that I might be able to claim for the inconvenience caused after I recounted to her the awful experience and the additional costs I paid out, such as tracking, wheel re-balancing, travel fees, phone calls to 0845 numbers etc. I had been contacted by several companies trying to convince me that I may wish to claim for personal injury which I didn't as I wasn't injured. I wanted to find out if anyone else had any similar experiences or knew if this was possible which is why I posted this message... Do you know the answer to the question paddy and stumpy? Or do you just wish to play devils advocate?

paddyandstumpy

You can claim for quantifiable losses (such as the cost of calling 0845 numbers, paying for tracking etc) as long as you have the receipts and can quantity the amount claimed for.

I was playing devils advocate so that when you approach the TP insurer 2 years after they closed the claim and they ask you why you now want more money, you'll have an answer ready ;-)

Quentin

The worst is they can only say "no"


Always worth a complaint to an insurer (only costs you a stamp!) who often will make a goodwill gesture to kill off a complaint rather than have to devote management time and money over a complaint.


But part of your claim is for uninsured losses rather than compensation - so itemise all those separately

Ian011

Technically you can claim for 084 or 087 calls made only after 26 October 2015 but notice was given in mid-2013 that the legislation was coming so try your luck.

Quentin

Ian011 wrote: »

Technically you can claim for 084 or 087 calls made only after 26 October 2015 but notice was given in mid-2013 that the legislation was coming so try your luck.

No.


You have always been able to claim back your uninsured losses off the negligent third party including the actual cost of phone calls!

ThinkingOutLoud_2

Ian011 wrote: »

Technically you can claim for 084 or 087 calls made only after 26 October 2015 but notice was given in mid-2013 that the legislation was coming so try your luck.

Are you confusing what line charges can be with costs the OP actually incurred?

You are right per your prior posts that there was legislation to stop financial services companies forcing customers to use chargeable lines. Some of his calls were not to insurers.

So if the insurer or other entity (still) had chargeable lines, he can do as Quentin says. If he wasn't charged for the calls, he'd have no loss or claim to make for those calls.

There are lots of chargeable line types about though - https://www.gov.uk/call-charges

Mungo76

Compensation would be around £100 - £200 for your inconvenience.

is it worth it?

Ian011

This.

Quentin wrote: »

You have always been able to claim back your uninsured losses off the negligent third party including the actual cost of phone calls!

Yes! I had misread the situation.

Crazy_Jamie

1kellie123 wrote: »

I hadn't considered claiming compensation as I didn't know you could.

You can't, or at least not for inconvenience and stress. You can claim quantifiable losses, such as for telephone calls and other out of pocket expenses, though losses of the type that you're referring to are generally added on to a more substantial claim rather than forming the entire basis for a claim. Whilst closer to the accident (or the time that the losses occurred) it may well be that the insurance company would have been amenable to paying you an arbitrary sum to cover these expenses, so long after the accident I suspect they will be far loss willing. You have nothing to lose by contacting them about it, though. I'd just be prepared to be as specific as you can about the losses that you incurred.