Car Damaged by Stray Shopping Trolley... Now What?

marshall_mcf

I’m looking for some advice, I recently noticed that one of the doors on my car has been damaged.  I wasn’t sure what it had caused it initially, but looking at the dents now it looks like a shopping trolley has come into contact with the door.  The difficulty I have is that I randomly noticed this one day when getting in the car, I can’t be sure when/where the bump happened, so I can’t go back and ask supermarkets if they have any CCTV footage - not sure they would be willing to help anyway. 

I can take the car into a body shop for repair and pay out of my own pocket. I don’t mind doing this, but I have a protected no claims insurance policy, and was wondering if this would be the best course of action? My fear is that despite being a young driver I have accumulated several years of NCD and my renewal rates have been below £250 for the past few years, which I gather is pretty good for a 24 year old driver.  

Would I loose my NCD in this case given there is not another party’s insurance for my insurer to claim from? 

Many thanks. 

EmmyLou30

If you have a protected no claims 'discount' then you can claim off your own insurance for the damage and you wouldn't lose you no claims discount......but.......your premium will go up in the future because you've made a 'fault' claim you will need to declare (not that it was your fault, simply that your insurance had no-one to claim the money back from). So the no claims discount will still be applied (60% or whatever) but it will be a discount off of a higher base premium.  

Possibly cheaper just to get the damage repaired yourself and leave it at that, whilst cursing the ignorant selfish people who allow trolleys to drift across car parks or the type of people who open their doors onto other people's cars :-( All part of the joys of car ownership. 

AdrianC

No claim discount is really "no spend discount".
What do insurers most care about? Whether having your business has cost them money. Whether they've had to pay for a claim... A true no-fault claim is one that your insurer has had their costs covered by the other party.

So, yes, if you put this through insurance (how much is your excess?), it will be an at-fault, because it will cost your insurer money. Whether it affects your NCD depends on if you have protected NCD. But it will affect the base premium before discount %age.

How bad is the damage? Would paintless removal be most appropriate?

You do not stand a cat in hell's of getting any money back from anybody else in this situation. It would be utterly disproportionate to shotgun around supermarkets to ask them to trawl historical CCTV in case the very minor incident happened on their premises - and, even if you find the incident, can you find the person responsible? The supermarket aren't responsible. Was it even a trolley in a supermarket car park...? Is there a point in time you can say it DEFINITELY didn't happen before - how long ago?

marshall_mcf

EmmyLou30 said:

If you have a protected no claims 'discount' then you can claim off your own insurance for the damage and you wouldn't lose you no claims discount......but.......your premium will go up in the future because you've made a 'fault' claim you will need to declare (not that it was your fault, simply that your insurance had no-one to claim the money back from). So the no claims discount will still be applied (60% or whatever) but it will be a discount off of a higher base premium.  

Possibly cheaper just to get the damage repaired yourself and leave it at that, whilst cursing the ignorant selfish people who allow trolleys to drift across car parks or the type of people who open their doors onto other people's cars :-( All part of the joys of car ownership. 

Hi, many thanks.  Sadly I thought that would be the case!  

I think my excess is around £500 anyway, and I would guess a replacement door would be between £500-1,000, so it would likely make sense just to get it repaired myself.  I’m yet to get any estimates but Google suggests it would be in this ball park. 

At first I was angry with the ignorant selfish person who let this happen, but given all that is going on in the world at the moment this is a relatively trivial matter! 

Thanks again. 

marshall_mcf

AdrianC said:

No claim discount is really "no spend discount".
What do insurers most care about? Whether having your business has cost them money. Whether they've had to pay for a claim... A true no-fault claim is one that your insurer has had their costs covered by the other party.

So, yes, if you put this through insurance (how much is your excess?), it will be an at-fault, because it will cost your insurer money. Whether it affects your NCD depends on if you have protected NCD. But it will affect the base premium before discount %age.

How bad is the damage? Would paintless removal be most appropriate?

You do not stand a cat in hell's of getting any money back from anybody else in this situation. It would be utterly disproportionate to shotgun around supermarkets to ask them to trawl historical CCTV in case the very minor incident happened on their premises - and, even if you find the incident, can you find the person responsible? The supermarket aren't responsible. Was it even a trolley in a supermarket car park...? Is there a point in time you can say it DEFINITELY didn't happen before - how long ago?

Hi AdrianC, many thanks for your response. 

That’s fully understood, to be honest I think protecting NCD is a bit of a scam anyway, but that’s for another thread. 

I had ChipsAway come and take a look, apparently it hit a ‘crash bar’ so they can’t do much about it.  It will have to be a bodyshop job. 

I realise that there is no chance of getting any money out from supermarkets etc., even if I saw it happen with my own eyes it would be a battle to get CCTV, finding who is responsible etc.

As a previous poster said, this sort of thing is one of the joys of car ownership 

Thanks for your insight. 

marshall_mcf

Image of the dent for those who are interested. Maybe it’s not a shopping trolley, no idea. 

I have since cleaned it up a little and optimistically applied some T-Cut. 

Lomast

A decent paint free repair specialist could almost certainly sort that for a couple hundred quid

AdrianC

marshall_mcf said:
to be honest I think protecting NCD is a bit of a scam anyway, but that’s for another thread. 

That depends.

It's basically a simple sum.
Cost of protected NCD vs Saving in premium multiplied by probability of claiming

2yrs of NCD is a fairly minimal percentage once you get past the initial foothills - it quickly gets to just 1% per year, but 1% of a very high premium would be a decent amount.

AdrianC

marshall_mcf said:

Image of the dent for those who are interested. Maybe it’s not a shopping trolley, no idea. 

I have since cleaned it up a little and optimistically applied some T-Cut. 

Doesn't look like a trolley to me. A trolley wouldn't do that downward diagonal.

neilmcl

marshall_mcf said:

Image of the dent for those who are interested. Maybe it’s not a shopping trolley, no idea. 

I have since cleaned it up a little and optimistically applied some T-Cut. 

I paintless dent removal (PDR) specialist should be able to take that out, I doubt it would be much more than £100. Try someone like Dent Devils to give you a quote, U sed them a few years ago for a couple of door dents and they made a perfect repair, only cost me £90 whereas my local bodyshop wanted around £500.

marshall_mcf

Thanks all for your thoughts.  I will send some pictures through to some local paintless dent removal firms - I hadn’t heard of these before so I am most grateful for your knowledge + input.