Neighbour damaged car

tylertoxic

In need of some advice. Woke up this morning to find damage to my car that was caused by a neighbor trying to parallel park behind my parked car. She has taken paint off the wheel arch and scraped up the back corner of mine and she has damaged her wheel arch (got images of both cars)

Have spoken to her and she has not denied it, not sure how she could as it was definitely her (partner watched her trying to park in the spot for 5 minutes last night and neither of our cars moved all night) and she is apparently going to find her insurance info out to give me (hers is a mobility car) however she doesn't know how any of this works and I am not really sure what to do next as I have never claimed before.

My car is pretty old and beat up anyway, though this damage is worse than anything else on it, I don't want this to end up costing me money and I assume without protected no claims it will do in the long run?

What do I do if after she has spoken to her son in law they decide she did not do it and deny it? Do I contact her insurers directly and claim from them if she gives me the info? I assume I have to tell my insurers regardless? or do I just forget it to save everyone the hassle? Argh.

imgur . com/a/VBTa8 - mine
imgur . com/a/fwOTy - hers

sevenhills

You could ask her if she wants to give you £150 to forget about it; otherwise it will go through the insurance.
You say your car is 'pretty old and beat', its likely that the repair will cost more than the car, and it may be a write off. A minor repair is likely to cost over £300

Retrogamer

tylertoxic wrote: »

My car is pretty old and beat up anyway, though this damage is worse than anything else on it, I don't want this to end up costing me money and I assume without protected no claims it will do in the long run?

If you claim directly from her insurance company, you will still need to inform your own of a non fault accident.
This may or may not cause premiums to rise. Some companies load premiums for non fault accidents and others don't

tylertoxic wrote: »

What do I do if after she has spoken to her son in law they decide she did not do it and deny it? Do I contact her insurers directly and claim from them if she gives me the info? I assume I have to tell my insurers regardless? or do I just forget it to save everyone the hassle? Argh.

If she denies it, you're stuffed regardless of what avenue you take to pursue it.

You or your own insurance company wouldn't be able to claim the money without being able to prove on the balance of probabilities that it was her that done it. (she might claim you drove into her and without any evidence both of your insurance companies pay out to each other and you both get loss of NCB and increased premiums for 5 years
I fixed your links below to make it easier for others

tylertoxic wrote: »

- mine

- hers

Strider590

sevenhills wrote: »

You could ask her if she wants to give you £150 to forget about it; otherwise it will go through the insurance.
You say your car is 'pretty old and beat', its likely that the repair will cost more than the car, and it may be a write off. A minor repair is likely to cost over £300

Someone scratched my car in a Tescos carpark, minor scratch = £600 through insurance and this was nearly 10 years ago, I went with it only because the guy drove off without leaving details.
Same scratch would have cost less than £150 independently.

The accident repair places are making an absolute killing from this and the claims management companies put their share on top, they're all just screwing eachother over and it can only get worse.

tylertoxic

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I will have a think about it and wait to see what she says if she ever comes back to talk to me about it! I doubt she will want to pay cash, I would rather not go through insurers but the thought of her getting away with damaging someone else's property is frustrating.

Though I assume she will need to inform her insurers anyway as she too has damage and hers is a much newer motability car that she presumably will need to hand back at some point.

I figured I would be stuffed if she tried to deny it, would the fact that the image of her car (I have another one too) parked up with the footpath the same side as the damage not go anywhere to prove that she must have been the one that caused it? I would have had to have driven up the footpath for me to have caused it and that is impossible, though I guess she could say she moved it after - does not bode well for neighbourly relations if she takes this route!

Warwick_Hunt

tylertoxic wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I will have a think about it and wait to see what she says if she ever comes back to talk to me about it! I doubt she will want to pay cash, I would rather not go through insurers but the thought of her getting away with damaging someone else's property is frustrating.

Though I assume she will need to inform her insurers anyway as she too has damage and hers is a much newer motability car that she presumably will need to hand back at some point.

I figured I would be stuffed if she tried to deny it, would the fact that the image of her car (I have another one too) parked up with the footpath the same side as the damage not go anywhere to prove that she must have been the one that caused it? I would have had to have driven up the footpath for me to have caused it and that is impossible, though I guess she could say she moved it after - does not bode well for neighbourly relations if she takes this route!

You should be informing yours too.

bigadaj

If the other car is on motobility then any claim won't presumably make much difference to that driver in any case.

EdGasketTheSecond

Someone at work did a similar thing to my car. I polished most of it out with some G3 compound and told her to forget about it which is what I would advise you to. Going through insurance will be hassle and cost for both of you.

mark5

If it's on mobility I can't see why she would deny it, hers will need to be repaired anyway so a claim will be made on the insurance.

tylertoxic

She has not been round to give me her details and is now avoiding me, imagine that. I have wiped my car down and the damage is not terrible, she has taken the paint off in a few places down to what I assume is the black plastic bumper and there are some scuffs around it where it hasn't gone right through the paint but it still looks awful. She has also cleaned hers up and it appears all she has been left with is a small dent.

When I approached it about it she seemed to think she didn't need to do anything and mobility wouldn't care, she also kept saying it was weird as she 'didn't hear a bang' when she was parking. I am dealing with an elderly lady here, early 80's at least, awful driver, cannot park to save her life and should not be allowed on the road. Because of her age I feel awkward about going around her house trying to get her information in case this is twisted in to me being a meanie who is intimidating her! However this woman is not very nice and it is killing me thinking that she might get away with this and does not seem to care one little bit about what she has done, she hasn't even bothered to come and look at the damage she has done to my car let alone anything else. I assume she has been advised by family to deny she did it and ignore me.

I cannot currently afford to pay my excess (would I need to if I went through my insurance if I am saying it is a no fault claim?) but then neither do I want to have increased premiums and a loss of no claims for the next x amount of time if she denies it which at this point I will assume she will do.

Small claims court an option? At this point my feeling is I really want her to not get away with this but I also want to minimize my losses after already having a scraped up car through no fault of my own!

She won't speak to me, I have no idea what she is doing regarding the dent in her car, if she will tell mobility, if she won't, what she will tell them if she does call them. I assume the minimum I have to do at this point is call Tesco and tell them someone has hit me but I do not wish to claim? After this will I have to declare an accident at every renewal? I really am all new to this!

McKneff

Ring her insurance company up. Report everything to them and go from there. They will get in touch with her about it all .
Inform your own ins company for information only. Take it from there