Advice after van accident please

confused.com2

Hello,

After advice/thoughts please!

Today I was driving down a road and a fella in a car has slowly come out a side road and hit me, his front bumper has hit my van passenger door. He admitted he's not seen me and apologised. We swapped insurance details and took pictures.

He was happy for me to obtain a quote to repair my van and take it from there. No contact made with car insurance companies yet. Not yet got the quote, the garage is pricing up, the door will need replacing and sill damage need repairing. 

Now my fears are this will be expensive, the fella will take it through insurance and my van will be written off. It's a 61 plate, I've owned for years and it's well maintained and has money spent on it!
What potentials could happen, what's my best course of action? 

I'm glad nobody was hurt but the van is my livelihood and I can't help but think I'm going to be out of pocket for something I didn't do!

DullGreyGuy

Legally you are obliged to tell your insurers, if he doesn't settle privately then there is a big risk of "forgetting" to inform them as its likely the third party insurers will log the claim on CUE and it'd be there for all to see. 

Its up to you if you claim from his insurance or from your own, assuming you are a small business and so have FOS rights then its worth noting claiming from his insurance means you cannot go to the Ombudsman if things go wrong. Advantage is it avoids paying the excess and claiming it back, issues if your renewal is soonish and they're more likely to provide an appropriate replacement vehicle if it is repairable. 

If its beyond economical repair you can ask to retain the salvage and so the settlement would be reduced by what the scrap merchant would have given them but you can then live with the damage or get a more basic repair done... all depends on what image you want your van to give etc. 

Brie

you need to inform your insurance company so they can do all the chasing up.  to not do so can cause all sorts of ructions.  

As long as there's no serious damage (frame etc) then there's no reason to write off your van.  A company may say it's uneconomical to repair in that the repair might cost more than they deem the van is worth.  So go online to autotrader or similar and find "your" van for sale there to give you a base price.  Tell them that's what you want if they try to say it's a write off.  And tell them that you're keeping your van.  Let the garage fix it and pocket any extra that you might get.  

confused.com2

Thanks for the advice, I'll get on to my insurance this afternoon. I can foresee me being out of pocket here! No doubt this will affect my premium even with no claim!

DullGreyGuy

confused.com2 said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll get on to my insurance this afternoon. I can foresee me being out of pocket here! No doubt this will affect my premium even with no claim!

Depends on your insurer, some will not add anything for a single non-fault claim on an otherwise good risk. Others will make a small increase. 

If this is your 10th non-fault claim then it will impact premiums as insurers will be thinking its improbable for you to be so unlucky and so may have a contributing factor in your driving styles, places you drive etc and eventually one of these accidents will be a hit and run or uninsured driver where it hits their pocket. 

confused.com2

I DullGreyGuy said:

confused.com2 said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll get on to my insurance this afternoon. I can foresee me being out of pocket here! No doubt this will affect my premium even with no claim!

Depends on your insurer, some will not add anything for a single non-fault claim on an otherwise good risk. Others will make a small increase. 

If this is your 10th non-fault claim then it will impact premiums as insurers will be thinking its improbable for you to be so unlucky and so may have a contributing factor in your driving styles, places you drive etc and eventually one of these accidents will be a hit and run or uninsured driver where it hits their pocket. 

Never had any claim at fault or not at fault in my driving life. 

sevenhills

confused.com2 said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll get on to my insurance this afternoon. I can foresee me being out of pocket here! No doubt this will affect my premium even with no claim!

Too late now, you can either go via insurance or ask the party to blame for a set amount, £200/£500?

I am assuming your van is drivable and you can ignore the damage?

confused.com2

sevenhills said:

confused.com2 said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll get on to my insurance this afternoon. I can foresee me being out of pocket here! No doubt this will affect my premium even with no claim!

Too late now, you can either go via insurance or ask the party to blame for a set amount, £200/£500?

I am assuming your van is drivable and you can ignore the damage?

Too late now for what?! 

Yes it's drivable, shuts and locks as normal. 

sevenhills

confused.com2 said:

Too late now for what?! 

Yes it's drivable, shuts and locks as normal. 

If you go through the insurance, you will lose money. If it's driveable and not too bad, you can just carry on driving a damaged car, no money lost.

DullGreyGuy

sevenhills said:

confused.com2 said:

Too late now for what?! 

Yes it's drivable, shuts and locks as normal. 

If you go through the insurance, you will lose money. If it's driveable and not too bad, you can just carry on driving a damaged car, no money lost.

You have lost money if you don't claim, the vehicle is worth less due to the damage. 

Technically in a non-fault accident the third party isn't liable for repairing your vehicle but for the loss in value of the vehicle due to the damage. The courts have simply decided that repair costs are just a simple proxy for the impact on value (which is interesting given out engineers used to reduce value by 80% of repair costs for pre-existing damage because people under estimate costs so would suggest the courts approach isn't ideal)

confused.com2

sevenhills said:

confused.com2 said:

Too late now for what?! 

Yes it's drivable, shuts and locks as normal. 

If you go through the insurance, you will lose money. If it's driveable and not too bad, you can just carry on driving a damaged car, no money lost.

With the damage it'll be much harder to sell and the damage to the sill and door may means it fails its MOT, plus it looks awful!

The insurance company were very nice to deal with, it's just been logged and no claims put in yet, I'm waiting on a private quote and if the fella is happy to pay great, if not I will take it through the insurance company.