Bogus car insurance claim - should we inform that we hit a traffic cone?

slick490

Hi all,
I was wondering if you could help me with this car insurance claim that my wife is involved in.

My wife was driving down a road on the right hand lane. There were cones closing the road of slowly causing the road to funnel into one lane. As she was driving she must have misjudged the distance to the cone and hit it slightly. There was a lorry on the right hand side which heard the noise and came to a stop. The driver came out and checked and asked whether the car had hit the lorry. They both agreed nothing had happened and went about their business. Now I have got a claims on my insurance saying that she had hit the car. There was a bystander as well who had confirmed nothing had happened but she did not think to take any information or details down since nothing had happened. 
I called the claims company stating that we have no idea why they are making these claims. They also told us to send some pictures of the car to be sure there was no damage as proof of this. I do have some previous damage to the car on the drivers side which would not really be interfering with this issue but this was a separate incident where it was damaged another time. 

I have 3 questions:
1) would we have to explain to the insurance company that we hit a traffic cone? 
2) does hitting a traffic cone cause insurance companies to increase their premiums and add it to the record? I have read somewhere that you do not need to disclose any incidents to the insurance companies and only accidents that cannot be mediated without the insurance provider. 
3) Is there anything else we should be doing in the mean time? 

thank you for your help!

TELLIT01

Simply explain that a traffic cone was hit, nothing else, and that all damage to the car is from previous incidents.  They may question how the other damage was caused.

PRAISETHESUN

You'll need to check your policy, but generally you need to disclose all incidents that could affect your insurance to your insurance company, not just the ones you intend to claim on. In this instance however I agree that there isn't even an "incident" so to speak... it sounds like you just bumped a traffic cone, and a truck driver stopped to see if you were okay. Not even sure how that'd get reported to your insurance if you didn't tell them. But as above you may get asked some questions about how the other damage was caused - you might've needed to inform them about it previously depending on how it was caused. Declaring events (even if you don't make a claim) can change how your insurer risk assesses you, which may increase your premiums in future.