My insurance paid out £1400 for a small scratch. Does a small scratch cost this ?

erudders

Hello, direct line paid out £1400 for this small scratch. Is this scratch a £1400 scratch ? I should have taken a better picture when I rubbed my cars paint of their car. It was in a car park, I was half way out of a space when the driver went around me and scraped my car. 

pramsay13

Does it matter?

erudders

pramsay13 said:

Does it matter?

The higher the cost of the claim, the higher the cost of new insurance. The amount does make your insurance go up. From £1000 a year and now £1500. 

neilmcl

erudders said:

pramsay13 said:

Does it matter?

The higher the cost of the claim, the higher the cost of new insurance. The amount does make your insurance go up. From £1000 a year and now £1500. 

Whether it was £400 or £1400, it would've made very little difference to your future premium, it would still have gone up that much.

iainscomputer

20 years ago my insurance broker told me even the smallest claim costs £1000, so allowing for inflation yours is probably less!

AdrianC

I can well believe that could be expensive, not because of the scratch, but if the metal's deformed - no easy access to the back of it, so perhaps having to tag-weld and pull.

Spraying metallic black on the wing, then blending it across tailgate/bumper/door... Yep, easily.

erudders

neilmcl said:

erudders said:

pramsay13 said:

Does it matter?

The higher the cost of the claim, the higher the cost of new insurance. The amount does make your insurance go up. From £1000 a year and now £1500. 

Whether it was £400 or £1400, it would've made very little difference to your future premium, it would still have gone up that much.

I have compared it to having a £400 and £1400 It makes a massive difference 
£400 is £82 a month 
£1400 is £172
It really does make a difference. Would be great if someone could tell me if the scratch would cost £1400 to fix 

AdrianC

erudders said:

neilmcl said:

erudders said:

pramsay13 said:

Does it matter?

The higher the cost of the claim, the higher the cost of new insurance. The amount does make your insurance go up. From £1000 a year and now £1500. 

Whether it was £400 or £1400, it would've made very little difference to your future premium, it would still have gone up that much.

I have compared it to having a £400 and £1400 It makes a massive difference 
£400 is £82 a month 
£1400 is £172
It really does make a difference. Would be great if someone could tell me if the scratch would cost £1400 to fix 

No, not the premium being £400 or £1400 - he means whether the claim was £400 or £1400 won't make much difference to your future premium.

It's an at-fault claim and an NCB ding. THAT's the bit that hits your premium...

They don't simply add the claim amount onto next year's premium. That'd be silly in the event of a major claim...

Tiexen

erudders said:

Hello, direct line paid out £1400 for this small scratch. Is this scratch a £1400 scratch ? I should have taken a better picture when I rubbed my cars paint of their car. It was in a car park, I was half way out of a space when the driver went around me and scraped my car. 

If you'd gone direct to a car respray company it would probably have cost around £300

Going via insurance you have a lot of people in ths chain from the person on the phone, the one who books the repair, dealing with the other insurer paperwork, each step will add  more to the cost - then they probably put 50% markup on top + VAT

Aretnap

erudders said:

pramsay13 said:

Does it matter?

The higher the cost of the claim, the higher the cost of new insurance. The amount does make your insurance go up. From £1000 a year and now £1500. 

Is that the difference between this claim and a claim for a couple of hundred quid, or is it the difference between this claim and no claim at all? And is it the difference for one particular insurer, or across the market in general? If the latter then I'm surprised as in general the fact that you've had a claim is much more important than the exact amount - many insurance companies (including Direct Line, incidentally) don't even ask for the size of the claim when you get a quote.

In any event Direct Line have the right to settle the claim as they see fit - it's their money that they're handing over - and it's probably safe to assume that they didn't build up £3 billion of net assets by giving their money away for no good reason. Remember they'll be paying for a high quality repair, possibly involving a new panel if there's deformation, and a significant amount of respraying to get a good colour match. It's not going to be a case of a lick of paint and a bit of polish. And that's before you factor in the possibility that the third party got an accident management company involved which means an expensive replacement car on credit hire while that was all going on, which will bump the price up substantially.

oldagetraveller1

I had a small "ding" in that same place on my car. It is double skinned and access from the inside was very difficult, probably a similar arrangement to the o.p.'s.. However, it wasn't under the fuel filler, opposite side.

A local p.d.r. did manage to push it out but it necessitated the removal of interior trim and a seat. Even then it was very hard and he persevered with many of his tools and over an hour. He knocked £10 off because it was only 98% perfect!

What I'm getting at is that the scrape shown is much larger, paint removed and will have been a much more involved job. £1400, possibly a bit on the high side but who is to know fully what was involved to rectify properly?