Better to claim on car insurance or pay directly?

erehwon

We had a prang in our car last week.  It was on two doors and I need to work out whether it is better to go through insurance or have the work done at my our cost.  We were wondering if there was a rule of thumb to work out which was better?  If we went through insurance, there would be the cost of the excess plus the increased insurance premiums.  How much do insurance premiums usually go up after an accident?  Is it normally over five years?  I'm assuming I can compare how much the cost of the body shop would be, with the additional insurance cost (excess and premiums increase)
And advice or guidance on this would be much appreciated.

cajef

Depends on how much the repairs are going to cost and whether your no claims will be reduced, it is a condition of your insurance cover that you still have to inform them of any accident even if you decide to pay for the repair yourself.

erehwon

cajef said:

Depends on how much the repairs are going to cost and whether your no claims will be reduced, it is a condition of your insurance cover that you still have to inform them of any accident even if you decide to pay for the repair yourself.

Thanks @cajef .  We decided the quote was too much, considering the excess and our premium was going to go up anyway.  No claims protected but looking forward to paying more for car insurance next year.

DullGreyGuy

Impact on insurance lasts 3-5 years depending on the insurer but the impact decreases as time goes on.

The main issue is the compounding effect, so if you make one claim and then are unfortunate and have to make a second in the following couple of years the increase caused by the second claim is substantially more than when you went from 0 to 1 claims. Obviously hopefully this was a one off but have known people (particularly with home insurance) who made a small claim then the next year had to make a large claim and then regretted the small claim at the following renewal.