No fault collision, left without a car due to write-off

uknick

DullGreyGuy said:

MEM62 said:

DaveZero said:

Thanks both. I'll look into Credit Hire and see what I can do. Grateful for the speedy responses.

D

Errrr...No.  You really do not want to do that.  It is an absolute can of worms.  These guys charge extortionate rates for the car hire and, unless the other party is found liable, you will be picking up the cost.  

No you don't, thats the very reason why the rates are high because they have to absorb the cases where the third party lies about the circumstances or gave false details etc. 

Is it your insurer that picks up the costs then?  I'm I've read a number of social media posts where someone has gone down the credit hire route and then they were found to be liable for the accident and ended up with a large bill.

DullGreyGuy

uknick said:

DullGreyGuy said:

MEM62 said:

DaveZero said:

Thanks both. I'll look into Credit Hire and see what I can do. Grateful for the speedy responses.

D

Errrr...No.  You really do not want to do that.  It is an absolute can of worms.  These guys charge extortionate rates for the car hire and, unless the other party is found liable, you will be picking up the cost.  

No you don't, thats the very reason why the rates are high because they have to absorb the cases where the third party lies about the circumstances or gave false details etc. 

Is it your insurer that picks up the costs then?  I'm I've read a number of social media posts where someone has gone down the credit hire route and then they were found to be liable for the accident and ended up with a large bill.

Would need to see the cases to be able to comment on them... the ones that get into problems is where the customer has refused to give the car back or has refused to give them bank statements etc 


Lots of people get confused by the convoluted wording in the credit agreement which is to deal with previous cases that went to court and the credit hire companies lost. Namely they will say you are liable for the bill up to the amount that the third party is found liable, this is a legal fudge to ensure they can claim the costs. Insurers outlay is covered by law but some insurers previously argued that it wasn't the claimants loss if they weren't liable for the cost as the credit hire company itself is too remote to the accident to claim directly (in the same way your employer cannot recover their sick pay or overtime paid to others to cover your shifts if you are injured in an accident that is someone else's fault)

DaveZero

Just a little update to this to close things off…

After over 2 years I finally got an admission of liability from the other part, the expected amount of payout, give or take a couple of hundred quid, and restoration of my NCB.

Mildly_Miffed

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81983156#Comment_81983156

Thanks for coming back to us - so few do!

It's a fine example of why "it's clear cut" rarely is.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81983203#Comment_81983203

The problem is that people genuinely misremember stuff (or weren't fully aware at the time so fill in the gaps with what they believe would have happened). As a claims handler had several cases where the policyholder gave an account of the circumstances that gave me no concerns of their honesty but subsequently CCTV emerged that showed a very different story; their reaction to it was convincing enough that it wasnt as they remembered it rather than them being caught out lying.

Rarely is probably an understatement, our third party claims team were divided into three… Recoveries (TP 100% at fault), 100% (PH 100% at fault) and Splits (either shared or questionable liability). The claims notification team would allocate the claim to one of three based on the circumstances as told by the policyholder in their initial call but the claim could move between teams if the FNOL person got it wrong or new information comes to light etc.

Recoveries would keep a case if the third party simply denied liability (eg claimed there was no contact, their car was somewhere else or simply doesnt respond) but would pass the claim to Splits if the third party alleged that our policyholder was at least partially to blame and was claiming for their own losses.

The proportion of claims that went from Recoveries to Splits was relatively small which either would mean either there are a lot of claims with very asymmetrical damage (£20k damage to ours and £0 to the TP) or that whilst disputes do happen they're not actually THAT common.

saajan_12

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81983156#Comment_81983156

gosh sounds like it must have been a nightmare over 2 years!

Can you outline what happened what they covered? Did you buy a vehicle or get a hire before the payout was settled?

Okell

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81983156#Comment_81983156

But what did you do about a replacement vehicle? (Which was the whole point of the thread…)

Did your insurer or the third party insurer sort it, or did you do it yourself?

DaveZero

Yeah, sorry. Totally missed the point of the thread.

I didn't get a hire vehicle based on the comments here. As it turned out, my insurer paid out the value of the written off car very quickly, which meant we could complete the last few months payments on it, and had enough left for (an admittedly quite crap) replacement car. So, in the end we were without a car for maybe a couple of weeks, which most of which I spent laid up recovering, spaced out on painkillers anyway.

Other things that happened along the way:

TP statement to insurers said that I was the one on the wrong side of the road. Back and forth then for two years until their insurer finally agreed to pay out after saying we'd go to court, and receiving two low offers and no admission of liability. The final offer admitted liability, and was only slightly short of what my insurer thought we'd stand a chance of getting. There was then a risk of it taking perhaps another year to settle, and ending up with costs if I didn't get at least as much as the final offer after going through court.

And the police officer at the scene who took my statement, who agreed that TP was clearly on the wrong side of the road, AND who had questioned TP and got the answer "I don't know why I was on the wrong side of the road" from them? Turns out he didn't complete the paperwork correctly, i.e., didn't write down my statement, but we couldn't follow that up through the police as he'd since left the force!

I don't know how much that affected things, but at the time it felt like everything was going against me. Very frustrating at the time, but incredibly relieved to have finally got to the end of it and in my favour.

Vitor

Sounds like a dash-cam would have been very useful to record the incident.

MattMattMattUK

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81986302#Comment_81986302

I agree, I do not understand why anyone would choose to not have one.