Someone crashed into my parked car

ariyanxh

Hi everyone,

Looking for some advice. Someone crashed into my parked car back in January. The third party has taken full responsibility. Trouble is I didn’t realise but at the time by tax and MOT both had expired…. 

I’m pretty sure my insurance company said they would not pay out to fix my car as I had no MOT and road tax.
I ended up paying for the costs myself. A legal advisor then phoned me and said I’m able to claim back my damages from the third party insurer. The third party insurer is not responding so she has suggested proceeding with taking them to court. My question is the third party insurer within their right not to payout for the damages if I had no tax or MOT? Even thought I wasn’t even at the vehicle at the time with the other driver claiming full responsibility?
Thanks

Carrot007

ariyanxh said:

My question is the third party insurer within their right not to payout for the damages if I had no tax or MOT?

I cannot see why. What baring does having no tax or mot have regarding crashing into a stationary object.

Quite frankly it's pretty poor of your insurance company to wash their hands of it as well. Still it would be in your T&C's and presumably it was bargain basement (in quality if not cost).

Car_54

No, the lack of MOT and tax is irrelevant.

facade

ariyanxh said:

My question is the third party insurer within their right not to payout for the damages if I had no tax or MOT? Even thought I wasn’t even at the vehicle at the time with the other driver claiming full responsibility?

No, they are liable because the person they insured damaged your property.

However, their liability will be limited to the reasonable repair cost, or the value of your un-MOT'd car, whichever is the lower.

I don't see why they won't respond, unless their driver hasn't told them anything about the accident.

Jasonh2015

it's a poor excuse not to indemnify a claim; have you logged a complaint or elevated it to an FOS compliant if you were not happy with their reply? You should be able to log a compliant with either company.

ontheroad1970

Jasonh2015 said:

it's a poor excuse not to indemnify a claim; have you logged a complaint or elevated it to an FOS compliant if you were not happy with their reply? You should be able to log a compliant with either company.

You can only go to FOS through your own insurance company if they are the ones handling it.

Aretnap

ariyanxh said:

I’m pretty sure my insurance company said they would not pay out to fix my car as I had no MOT and road tax.

If so, your insurance company was in the wrong. There might well have been a clause in your policy which said that your car had to have a valid MOT, but your insurer can still only use that as grounds to deny a claim if your lack of an MOT somehow contributed to the accident.

So they could potentially have correctly refused a claim if you had defective brakes which would have been picked up by an MOT, and a brake failure caused you to drive into a wall. However clearly your lack of an MOT or road tax did not cause someone else to drive into your parked car.

You sound like you have good grounds to make a formal complaint to your insurance company, and if they didn't reverse their decision the Financial Ombudsman would side with you. However if you've already started the process of claiming from the third party's insurer, it might be as well to continue with that process instead.

ariyanxh said:

My question is the third party insurer within their right not to payout for the damages if I had no tax or MOT? Even thought I wasn’t even at the vehicle at the time with the other driver claiming full responsibility?

No, the same principle applies. Unless taxing and MOTing your car would somehow have prevented the accident, it's not relevant to your claim. 

TooManyPoints

You should note, of course, that liability to pay your costs rests with the Third Party. If you are going to take any action it should be against them rather than their insurers. Their insurers are nothing to do with you. If you press the TP for payment it may stir them into action and encourage them to chivvy up their insurers. If not simply issue a claim against the TP.

ariyanxh

Ok guys thanks for your help . I’m going to carry on with the legal action.
To make things worse my insurance company actually cancelled my policy after the incident for no reason. They kept changing their reason for doing so. In the end they settled for “I owed them money” , but I paid my insurance 1 year in advance. I kind of stopped pursuing them because I don’t see the point really? 
If I can reclaim the costs i would be fairly satisfied.

AdrianC

ariyanxh said:

To make things worse my insurance company actually cancelled my policy after the incident for no reason. They kept changing their reason for doing so. In the end they settled for “I owed them money” , but I paid my insurance 1 year in advance. I kind of stopped pursuing them because I don’t see the point really? 

You do know that you will now need to declare a cancelled policy for the rest of your life? And that that's going to make your future policies VERY expensive and hard to come by...?

They cannot just cancel for no reason, and they cannot claim debt if there is no debt.

ariyanxh

AdrianC said:

ariyanxh said:

To make things worse my insurance company actually cancelled my policy after the incident for no reason. They kept changing their reason for doing so. In the end they settled for “I owed them money” , but I paid my insurance 1 year in advance. I kind of stopped pursuing them because I don’t see the point really? 

You do know that you will now need to declare a cancelled policy for the rest of your life? And that that's going to make your future policies VERY expensive and hard to come by...?

They cannot just cancel for no reason, and they cannot claim debt if there is no debt.

Yeah I do know all of that. So if I go to the FO, what’s the best case scenario? Can my cancellation be over turned?