"At fault" insurance sleight of hand

prowla

My car was damaged whilst parked & unattended, which I had repaired via insurance.

I see from my insurance company that the claim is marked as "at fault", but clearly there was no fault on my part, unless you include parking legally as being blameworthy.

I called the insurance company and the person said "obviously" (not sure how many times they used that word, but it wasn't obvious to me, or I wouldn't have called!) since they couldn't find the third party who had committed the damage, it was marked as my fault.

It seems to me that this is a sleight of hand, attributing fault to an innocent victim of an act of damage.

facade

Insurance companies are like Humpty Dumpty, words mean just what they choose them to mean, neither more nor less

What you or I think "At fault" means is rather different to their meaning, which is more "We cant get our money back from someone else, who would be "at fault" in the conventional sense, so our client is "At fault"

Plus, they can argue that it is your fault for parking where it can be damaged, they certainly will increase your risk factor, as you might do it again.

Aretnap

You're right that it's not obvious, however it is the norm.

Insurance companies don't actually classify claims according to who they think was to blame for them, but according to whether or not they were able to recover the costs that they paid out from another party. In the jargon this is called "fault" because in most cases it does correspond to fault - if the accident was someone else's fault, and you can prove it, you'll be able to recover the costs from that person, or their insurer. Whereas if it was your own fault, you can't recover costs from anyone else, because there's nobody you blame but you. However it does lead to situations where you weren't to blame, but there's no at fault party to claim against either, going down as "fault" claims on your part.

It would probably be better if insurers used a different word to describe the categories (eg "recovery of costs made" vs "recovery of costs not made""; however the principle of classifying claims like this is fairly sound. If nothing else it's clear and objective; two people can argue until the end of time about who was to blame for an accident, however which insurance company ended up paying for it is a simple matter of fact, easily verified. And if you could get your claim classified as non-fault by telling your insurer that your car was hit while parked, everybody who damaged their car by reversing into a bollard would tell their insurers that they'd come back to their car to find it like that, and get lower premiums in future than if they told the truth...

AdrianC

prowla said:

My car was damaged whilst parked & unattended, which I had repaired via insurance.

I see from my insurance company that the claim is marked as "at fault", but clearly there was no fault on my part, unless you include parking legally as being blameworthy.

I called the insurance company and the person said "obviously" (not sure how many times they used that word, but it wasn't obvious to me, or I wouldn't have called!) since they couldn't find the third party who had committed the damage, it was marked as my fault.

It seems to me that this is a sleight of hand, attributing fault to an innocent victim of an act of damage.

Was there anybody else who took the blame? No.
Who ended up paying? Your insurer.

That's the way it works. Insurers care about whether having your business will cost them money in claims or not. In this case, your policy did cost them money.

bartelbe

You have learnt an important lesson, which is be careful what you claim for. Obviously if another party is involved in a crash, you have to report it but with car park damage you would be better off either living with it, if it is not too serious or fixing it yourself.

Your insurer will use that claim as an excuse to put up your premiums for years and it is on the insurers database, so any new insurer will know about the claim.

Sandtree

bartelbe said:

Your insurer will use that claim as an excuse to put up your premiums for years and it is on the insurers database, so any new insurer will know about the claim.

Not really an excuse is it? The average claim in the uk is over £4,000 and the average premium under £500. 

Statistically those that have made more claims are more likely to make yet more claims than someone who's made none. The average premium rise after a claim would take many years to pay off the average claim (and that ignoring the fact that premiums have to cover taxes, operational costs etc)

TooManyPoints

Insurance companies don't actually classify claims according to who they think was to blame for them, but according to whether or not they were able to recover the costs that they paid out from another party

Exactly. In relation to a "no claim bonus" the clue is in the name - it is not a "no blame bonus." If you claim you can expect your premiums to be affected and must count yourself lucky if they are not. I was lucky. My car was damaged whilst parked but I managed to collar the Third Party. Despite his vehement denials my insurers managed to get reimbursement from him (though they had to go to court to do so) and my premiums were unaffected. But I was quite prepared to see them increase.

Grey_Critic

This is just like my Holiday Insurance when I disclosed I had broken my collarbone - the reason given for increased premium ** Well there is a risk you might do it again** as if you go around breaking bones for the fun of it.

facade

Grey_Critic said:

This is just like my Holiday Insurance when I disclosed I had broken my collarbone - the reason given for increased premium ** Well there is a risk you might do it again** as if you go around breaking bones for the fun of it.

You would think that once someone has an accident, they would be less likely to repeat it, as they would learn from the experience.

However, insurers have access to many, many years of statistics that show the reverse is more often the case. Maybe people think that lightning never strikes twice (which is only actually true if the first strike completely obliterated the object )

AdrianC

Grey_Critic said:

This is just like my Holiday Insurance when I disclosed I had broken my collarbone - the reason given for increased premium ** Well there is a risk you might do it again** as if you go around breaking bones for the fun of it.

Did you break it doing a relatively high-risk activity that relatively few travellers would do?

Mountain biking or horse riding, say? Or a strenuous hill walk?