Non-fault motor insurance claim - getting nowhere

phs12

On 21st December I went out to my car, which was parked near my home address and found the front bumper had been dislodged and one side was hanging on the ground.

 A witness informed me that a fire engine had caused the incident and that the fire engine was still round the corner. The driver came to look at the damage to my vehicle and said that he may have caused it and that on-board CCTV footage would show what happened. The fire engine had driven into the street where my car was parked without touching my car only to find they were in the wrong street to attend their incident. It was on the way out that the fire engine made only slight contact with my car’s front wing, dislodging the bumper.

I was given a slip of paper with the insured’s insurance company to contact and after two days of being told “the systems are down”, eventually they registered my claim on 23rd December. Since then I have had absolutely no written contact from the insurance company (which I find really strange).

Although I had a phone number to call, I was told that the Claims team do not take calls directly. I called again on 20th January and was told that they would contact the claims team to see if the insured was accepting liability and that he would call or email me next week to let me know.

No contact came so I phoned again on 26th January. I was then given another number to call the Claims team direct. I was told that the insured accepted that they had made contact with my vehicle but were not yet accepting liability due to where my vehicle was parked. Vehicles are always parked on both sides of this street (there are no yellow lines) and my car was parked opposite a narrow unadopted cobbled side street which no vehicles use for access. Also, the fire engine got through fine when entering the street surely showing that there is enough room to pass.

I phoned again on 3rd February and was told liability was not yet confirmed but the person would tell the claims handler I had called again.

I really don’t know what to do now to get this to progress. Meanwhile I have no car. I have read about accident management companies but don’t like the idea of them making money out of this, especially as I don’t need a hire car for daily travel. I mentioned this to the insurance company, and they said they would prefer me not to. On the other hand it appears that unless I can exert some sort of pressure on the insured/insurance company, this could drag on for some time yet. 

Any advice appreciated.

 

 

 

[Deleted User]

You could go through your own insurance, although that will mean paying your excess until it is resolved.

Otherwise you could write to them with a deadline and a threat of small claims court if they don't sort it out by then. You will need to know how much the repair is going to cost.

DullGreyGuy

Out of curiosity which company are you contacting? 

The Road Traffic Act has exemption for a proper fire brigades from needing to have motor insurance. Most normally use claims handling companies but dont have insurance or only have a stop loss type cover on aggregate losses so dont deal with individual claimants. 

Claims handling companies, like third party insurers, are there to protect their clients not fundamentally to be helpful to third parties. The difference between claims handling companies for entities like the Fire Brigade -v- an insurer or their claims handling company is that they have to follow the instructions of their principle whereas an insurer can go against the wishes of their insured.

If you want to go it alone then you need to wait until they've had clearance from their principle. Whilst clearly its important to you for the fire brigade its simply not their top priority and they wont refuse to go to a 999 call because they have a meeting with the claims firm to take a statement. 

Most will claim off their own insurers and let them deal with the third party, its what you pay them for and they have much more patience for dealing with slow counterparties. You could try an accident management company but you will struggle if you dont need a hire car and many arent fans of dealing with claims against the emergency services. 

m0bov

Will be better to go via your own insurances. I hope you told them about it? Your premium will go up anyway, so might as well get something for it rather than chasing it yourself. Did you get the witness statement? Did you report as the driver left the scene?

phs12

DullGreyGuy said:

Out of curiosity which company are you contacting? 

The Road Traffic Act has exemption for a proper fire brigades from needing to have motor insurance. Most normally use claims handling companies but dont have insurance or only have a stop loss type cover on aggregate losses so dont deal with individual claimants. 

Claims handling companies, like third party insurers, are there to protect their clients not fundamentally to be helpful to third parties. The difference between claims handling companies for entities like the Fire Brigade -v- an insurer or their claims handling company is that they have to follow the instructions of their principle whereas an insurer can go against the wishes of their insured.

If you want to go it alone then you need to wait until they've had clearance from their principle. Whilst clearly its important to you for the fire brigade its simply not their top priority and they wont refuse to go to a 999 call because they have a meeting with the claims firm to take a statement. 

Most will claim off their own insurers and let them deal with the third party, its what you pay them for and they have much more patience for dealing with slow counterparties. You could try an accident management company but you will struggle if you dont need a hire car and many arent fans of dealing with claims against the emergency services. 

I wasn't sure if I was allowed to say on here, but as you're asking I presume it must be OK.

The insured is
Greater
Manchester
Combined
Authority

and their insurers are Zur ich.

phs12

Thank you for the responses so far @[Deleted User], @m0bov and @DullGreyGuy

phs12

Zu rich have agreed my claim today (Without Prejudice).

Made my usual weekly phone call today. Told them that every time they said they would call me back or email me, they have failed to do so and that I'd had no written communication whatsover since I made the claim. Handler put me on hold whilst he read the case details and came back saying he had decided to settle the claim himself; apparently they emailed their insured on 13/01/23 but as they still hadn't had a reply and their insured "was probably at fault" they would settle. It appears that the insured has been the main bottleneck in this case.

Hire car coming tomorrow.

Talk to me about Compensation for Loss of Use (of vehicle). I mentioned this when I spoke to the Third Party damage team but due to her accent, I couldn't understand some of what she said but she asked me whether I'd used Public Transport. I haven't, I've just had to put off doing things or borrow my partners car in the evening (to visit my elderly mother).  

DullGreyGuy

phs12 said:

Talk to me about Compensation for Loss of Use (of vehicle). I mentioned this when I spoke to the Third Party damage team but due to her accent, I couldn't understand some of what she said but she asked me whether I'd used Public Transport. I haven't, I've just had to put off doing things or borrow my partners car in the evening (to visit my elderly mother).  

Has your vehicle been drivable or not? 

LoU is a per day amount for the general inconvenience for your car being off the road... you generally cannot claim both LoU and hire or alternative transport. In my day it was £10 a day but it may have moved up since then.

phs12

Hi @DullGreyGuy

No, the bumper was dislodged when the fire engine made contact with the front wing (amazingly only a light scratch on the wing) so the car was/is not driveable.

Yeah, £10 per day was the sort of figure I thought was reasonable. Makes it all the more puzzling that they didn't settle earlier to avoid having to pay this.

DullGreyGuy

phs12 said:

Yeah, £10 per day was the sort of figure I thought was reasonable. Makes it all the more puzzling that they didn't settle earlier to avoid having to pay this.

There is always two schools of thought... settle quickly and mitigate the payout per claimant or play hardball, pay more per claimant but to less parties because people give up.

I started in claims and always fought with accident management companies saying they'd given a more expensive car than they needed or given it longer than needed. My second project after leaving claims was to agree to pay "all" claims without question in exchange for a discount. There was a right to audit in cases we felt were too much.

My job was to make the agreement workable but I always doubted the economics of the deal but the commercial guys felt the discount on all cases worked out better.

phs12

Europ car are a joke.

Yesterday afternoon, they said they would drop a hire car off at 9am and took my CC details for Petrol guarantee. Then I get a call from a more local representative, can't do that rate of car for 9am, will I accept 12pm. I accept. They ring me just before 12pm asking for my CC details again, and without even saying it won't be 12pm now, she says the car should be with me in less than 2 hours. 2 hours passes and still no car. It eventually turns up at 3:40pm, too late for me to use it today (as I have other commitments for the rest of today).