Damaged new neighbours car while moving house

[Deleted User]

There was no legal obligation by the neighbour to avoid using her insurance and the text message from her is meaningless, she can't speak on behalf of the insurance company.

It's the insurers you need to deal with. They have got the car repaired to a presumably high standard. £800 is a little high but not unreasonable for an insurance job.

Really the only way you will be able to avoid paying this is by arguing that the cost of the repair was not reasonable and so the insurer failed in their duty to minimize costs. To do that you would have to show that the same repair could have been completed for less, or that some part of the repair process was unnecessary (i.e. the garage padded the bill). Given that it's been repaired now that will be extremely difficult to do.

Just pay, and be glad she isn't claiming increased premiums from you too.

jimbo6977

Recently moved house and mildly pranged my OLD neighbours' car on the way out (D'OH!). Settled at £600. 

So £800 doesn't seem so bad.

Keep_pedalling

Apart from the £800 you owe the insurance company the neighbour is probably still expecting her £100 excess that you agreed to pay.

I also suspect that she had no idea that her insurance company would pursue you for their costs. You would be. Wise to pay that, to avoid your son getting involved in a neighbour dispute which might harm a future house sale. 

TigerTanaka

It has taken over 3 years to finally resolve this but I thought I would update the thread for anyone else who finds themselves in this situation.

After I originally posted this, I heard nothing from the insurance company for over 12 months - until I received a letter from their solicitors (now 2 and a half years after the incident) who informed me that they were "now drafting court proceedings which will be served on you direct" and "If you wish to avoid litigation we will require payment in full within 14 days".

I replied saying that it was not acceptable to wait 12 months before repairing the car and that the insurance company still had not provided evidence of the cost of repairs (I said that an internal invoice from their claims management division proved nothing, I wanted to see the invoice from the repairer).

Clearly they did not want to disclose the actual repair cost (as I suspect the insurance company' claims management people had heavily marked it up to get to a £800+ charge) and the solicitor defended the delay in getting the car fixed by saying that "all of [the insurer's] repair garages were closed for the majority of 2020 due to lockdown".  Clearly this was not true and a quick check of their accounts at companies house showed that the insurer had repaired nearly 80,000 cars in 2020.  I replied stating that I did not accept the argument for the delay and also enclosed a screenshot of the original text message from the car owner offering to settle for £100.

Slight change of tactic from the solicitor who suggested that I could retrospectively get a quote done for the work myself (at this point we are 3 years after the accident and 2 years after the repairs had been done).  I responded by saying that this is was in no way realistic to do that at this point, I should have had the opportunity (as agreed) to do this at the time.  Their response was more threats of litigation.

I replied summarising my position (car repaired 12 months after the accident, no opportunity to independently verify costs, no proof of actual cost paid for repairs, no explanation for the £100 offer by the car owner).  I also noted that when one of their own clients wants to make a claim on that insurer, the insurer insists on approving costs in advance of any repairs being undertaken - something that they do not seem to respect when the situation is reversed.

Silence for 4 months and I get an email agreeing to £100 in full and final settlement.  Not sure what ever happened to all those court proceedings that were being drafted...

An unfortunate situation here but I was ready to go to court for this and risk a CCJ as I was convinced the claim was not reflective of the damage and was annoyed in the way that I had been treated by the other parties.  In the end, I suspect the insurance company would have been reluctant to disclose to the court how much they actually paid to get the car fixed or risk their client being asked to explain what she meant by her text message, offering to settle for £100.

DullGreyGuy

TigerTanaka said:

An unfortunate situation here but I was ready to go to court for this and risk a CCJ as I was convinced the claim was not reflective of the damage and was annoyed in the way that I had been treated by the other parties.

Thanks for providing the update.

Just on the above point, to clear up the potential misunderstanding thanks to our stupid choice of terminology... a CCJ only ever appears on your credit file or has to be declared if you fail to settle the judgement within 1 month. So had you allowed it to go to court and the judgement was made against you and you paid it off a couple of weeks later then you wouldn't have gotten a CCJ

TigerTanaka

DullGreyGuy said:

TigerTanaka said:

An unfortunate situation here but I was ready to go to court for this and risk a CCJ as I was convinced the claim was not reflective of the damage and was annoyed in the way that I had been treated by the other parties.

Thanks for providing the update.

Just on the above point, to clear up the potential misunderstanding thanks to our stupid choice of terminology... a CCJ only ever appears on your credit file or has to be declared if you fail to settle the judgement within 1 month. So had you allowed it to go to court and the judgement was made against you and you paid it off a couple of weeks later then you wouldn't have gotten a CCJ

Yes - I should have made that bit clearer.  No way was I going to have a CCJ on my record so if I had gone to court and lost, I would have stumped up the money.  Finding that out gave me the confidence to push back when the solicitors were using pretty tough language regarding litigation.

[Deleted User]

I wonder how much money they wasted chasing you.

Sleepysophie

@TigerTanaka thanks so much for the update. Its good to know this turned out in your favour but I am curious to know.....how are things between you and your neighbour now? Did you both agree this was for the insurance company to agree and settle and not take it personally? did you find a way forward? 

TigerTanaka

It was actually my sister-in-law's neighbour (however as it took so long to sort out, my SIL moved again before the claim was settled). 

The issue was that the neighbour thought that she just had to pay the £100 excess and this would be repaid to her when I paid this same amount to the insurer - hence she was happy to let the insurance company deal with it.  Unfortunately she misunderstood the situation so when the insurer came after me for a large amount which I objected to, she realised she was not getting her money back any time soon. 

I then received a few abusive text messages from her saying that it wasn't her fault that she did not understand the process etc but I responded by saying that as she decided to go down the insurance route, then that is the process we now needed to follow.