Third Party insurer won't pay - how to make them

Danvers23

We were involved in a crash that wasn't our fault and resulted in our car being written off - the other driver drove into us. As it was a no-fault claim, our insurer passed us on to an accident management company to deal with the third party insurer. 

We had a witness and after some back and forth, liability was accepted by the third party insurer. We were then told the payment would be being made 'shortly'. It never came. I called the accident management company, who again contacted the third party insurer, who said 'yeah it didn't get made' (no reason given). They then offered to make the payment by BACS. I gave them my bank details. Still nothing. 

I don't know what I can do to make the third party insurer physically hand over the money? My only contact is with the accident management company, who seem to shrug their shoulders and say 'well we've asked them to'. I can only think of filing a small claim through the courts, but I don't even know who that would be against as I don't have a direct contract with the third party insurer. 

Any advice? 

Sandtree

litigation would be against the third party themselves, their insurers then respond on their behalf.

Has the accident management company given you a credit hire car? Is your car repairable or a write off?

Danvers23

The car was a write off. We had a hire car for a while but sent it back as we weren't using it much (we couldn't put the dog in it and we have a second car).

Everything has been agreed, no one seems to be contesting liability, it's just the third party insurer seem to be staffed by people who can't be bothered to do the admin involved to just get the payment to us. 

Sandtree

Then you must discuss any litigation with the accident management company as their hire charges have to be included unless they have an agreement with the TPI to exclude them but to honour the court order.

Danvers23

They have apparently already recovered their hire charge costs. It's only our payment which isn't forthcoming.

TELLIT01

This is something your insurer should be sorting out in conjunction with the accident management company.  You should not have to be doing any chasing - that's why you have insurance in place.

Sandtree

TELLIT01 said:

This is something your insurer should be sorting out in conjunction with the accident management company.  You should not have to be doing any chasing - that's why you have insurance in place.

The "insurer" is likely to be Admiral or a broker as they frequently sell pass off non-fault cases to accident management companies rather than deal with own damage under the policy and as such the insurer will only have a note of the incident on a FYI basis. 

The main problem here is the OP has come out of credit hire so the TPI has no incentive for a quick settlement and the accident management company has already got most their money (would imagine the engineer fee for the total loss is outstanding) so have somewhat lost interest whereas they should be still pursuing the claim for the OP.

Danvers23

Totally agree that seems to the case. No one seems to care very much if we get our money. Certainly the TPI has no particular incentive to pay out if they can keep the money sitting in their account a bit longer. So I'm just not sure what I can do, given no one's actually denying we're owed it, they're just not handing it over. 

Sandtree

Unfortunately all you can do is change the accident management company, or chase the third party insurer (if you don't have their details the accident management company will give them to you).

If you want to go the court route then you can technically send the letter before action to either the insurer or the third party however policyholders get more scared about being taken to court (its a daily occurrence for an insurance firm) and so tend to then get angry at their insurance company for you 

The alternative route it to put it through your insurance as Tellit01 somewhat suggests and they will settle your claim and then recover their outlay from the TPI... due to inter-company agreements this is normally easier than paying out on a claim from an accident management company (basically most insurers trust each other's valuations whereas no one trusts accident management companies)