Car written off by recovery company.

Korkyb

Hi all

Mrs Korkyb's car broke down while we were a fair few hundred miles from home 2 days before Christmas (we were visiting friends over the festive period). Luckily it conked out just as we arrived at said friends house!

Contacted our breakdown service (Autoaid) who arranged visit by a local breakdown service who confirmed car not repairable on the roadside.

As there was no chance of getting car repaired over Festive period Autoaid offered to arrange recovery of car back to our home location (they also gave us an allowance to arrange a hire car to get us home).

Unfortunately while en route back home on the recovery vehicle there was an incident that resulted our car being damaged to the extent that it was written off.

We dealt directly with the recovery companies insurance and have since received the payment due for the ex-car.


In spite of the fact that our car was written off (situations happens) I would like to highlight that the service that we received from Autoaid from beginning to end was excellent from our initial breakdown call to being allocated a named person to follow up that everything was going to plan.

The recovery company were also fine to deal with and provided us with all the information we needed to get things sorted.


We reported the "incident" to our insurer who basically said they wouldn't be getting involved & that I should deal directly with the recovery companies insurer myself.


So my questions are:

- Now that the wrecked car is no longer ours (I'm assuming the insurance company now own it) what happens with regards to the V5 which we still have?

- When looking to renew our insurance is this episode classed as an "incident" that we have to declare for the next however many years?



Coincidentally I had just negotiated a reduction in our insurance renewal with our current provider a few hours before getting the phone call letting us know that the car had been damaged.

The fact that the car was written off didn't affect the premium paid to renew the insurance which was due around 3 weeks after the car was damaged so unsure if our current insurer classed it as an "incident".

[Deleted User]

Why not just ask your insurer?

Korkyb

[Deleted User] said:

Why not just ask your insurer?

I have asked my insurer about whether I have to declare it as an incident with other insurers and didn't / couldn't get a straight answer.

My insurer wasn't involved in the claim against the other parties insurance so wont comment on the V5 situation.

I could phone the other parties insurance company about the V5 but would prefer to avoid another 90 minutes listening to how important my call is to them if someone out in MSE forum land can give me an answer which might be of interest / use to someone else in the future.

Goudy

You can go here
https://www.gov.uk/sold-bought-vehicle
And tell DVLA that you are no longer the owner of the vehicle.
There's an option to fill in if it's scrapped or written off. 
You should do this as soon as they have sent payment, you don't want it still in your name and then someone puts it back on the road.
They tell you to destroy the old V5C, but hang onto it a while, the insurance company may yet ask for it. 

Insurance companies will class this as a "non fault" incident and they usually ask about such incidents for 5 years.

Korkyb

Thanks, just the information I needed. 

Much appreciated. 

Grumpy_chap

Goudy said:

Insurance companies will class this as a "non fault" incident and they usually ask about such incidents for 5 years.

Is it, definitely?
I ask as I genuinely do not know and this is the exact question the OP was asking but, the OP said:

Korkyb said:

while en route back home on the recovery vehicle there was an incident that resulted our car being damaged to the extent that it was written off.

So, the way I read that, the car was really damaged as "goods in transit".
It happened to be a car that was being transported.
It could just as easily have been any other item belonging to the OP - for the purposes of discussion, house contents during a move (as that would be an example where a similar value of damage could occur).

If the OP was moving house and the TV, stereo, fridge, computer, oven, washing machine etc all got damaged that would still eb "goods in transit".  
Would the OP declare that as a "non fault" incident for their car insurance?

Aretnap

Korkyb said:

[Deleted User] said:

Why not just ask your insurer?

I have asked my insurer about whether I have to declare it as an incident with other insurers and didn't / couldn't get a straight answer.

This is not surprising to be honest; your current insurer cannot speak for what other insurers might or might not ask you to declare in future. It will depend on what question you are actually asked - not all insurers use the same wording.

Nobbie1967

Grumpy_chap said:

Goudy said:

Insurance companies will class this as a "non fault" incident and they usually ask about such incidents for 5 years.

Is it, definitely?
I ask as I genuinely do not know and this is the exact question the OP was asking but, the OP said:

Korkyb said:

while en route back home on the recovery vehicle there was an incident that resulted our car being damaged to the extent that it was written off.

So, the way I read that, the car was really damaged as "goods in transit".
It happened to be a car that was being transported.
It could just as easily have been any other item belonging to the OP - for the purposes of discussion, house contents during a move (as that would be an example where a similar value of damage could occur).

If the OP was moving house and the TV, stereo, fridge, computer, oven, washing machine etc all got damaged that would still eb "goods in transit".  
Would the OP declare that as a "non fault" incident for their car insurance?

I don’t think that matters, the car that was insured was involved in an accident/incident. Just the same as if someone drove into your parked car while you were in bed. Luckily in this case the costs will be recovered, but you can see circumstances where this might not happen, for instance if a tree fell on the transporter the company may not be liable for damage and a claim would be made on the car insurance.

[Deleted User]

The danger is that they only want to give the OP the value of a broken car. I've seen that argued when damage was done during recovery. Of course it screws you, because your insurance would have fixed your car but won't fix a random broken one you buy.

Korkyb

[Deleted User] said:

The danger is that they only want to give the OP the value of a broken car. I've seen that argued when damage was done during recovery. Of course it screws you, because your insurance would have fixed your car but won't fix a random broken one you buy.

The recovery agents insurance company had to give us enough money to replace the car as bought from a "reputable dealer".

This of course was more than we could have sold our car for.

We got £7k settlement for the car when I reckon the best I could have sold it for would have been £5k / £5.5k (even less if we had traded it in).

They didn't take account of the fact that at the time of being written off was a broken down car (alternator had died) or the fact that we would have had to pay to repair that to make it a fully working car........I wont even mention that the Air Con hadn't worked for 3 years :-).

We had been getting round to thinking of changing the car anyway so have come out of this quite well.


The reason I wondered about if it had to be declared in future insurance quotes is that every time I did contact our insurance company they said that as this was a motor trade incident / claim that it was treated differently than a normal claim but then seemed unable to elaborate on this.

lopsyfa

I don't think you should have to declare but my opinion or that of any other does not matter. Only your current insurer can answer that question 100%. What you don't want is not to declare it as at fault and then later have issues in the future for not declaring a claim.

I will put a formal question to your insurer in writing and if they fail to answer, raise a formal complaint and escalate it accordingly. You will find it gets to someone who can provide an answer and keep this safe in case you need it in the future.