No response from other parties insurance company after six months.

smudge2013

Six months ago I was hit from behind while stationary at a roundabout by a young lad driving far too fast for the conditions. It was dark and raining heavily and he ended up locking up and skidding into the back to me. Luckily the damage was fairly minor, but still required a couple of weeks in the repair centre for a re-spray. I raised a claim through my insurer who judged the other driver as at fault. They organised an Enterprise-rent-a-car for me while my car was being repaired.

The car came back to me as good as new and I hoped after a few weeks once all paperwork was in, the claim would be settled and my open claim would change to non-fault. However the months have rolled by, and my claim has remained open. On the six month anniversary I phoned my insurer and spoke to the recoveries team to question why is the claim still open, and what are they doing to pursue it. They informed me that the other drivers insurance (a big name company), have yet to respond to any of the correspondance sent from my insurer. I was really suprised to hear this. In a way even if they disputed the claim, at least that is a starting point but to not hear anything at all is very odd. The young driver who hit me was begging me not to make a claim as he already had one at fault claim in his brief driving history, so I strongly suspect he never reported the accident to his insurer.

My insurer said they would now refer this to a legal firm to recover the costs of the claim. However the company they have appointed have some fairly concerning review scores on Google about cases dragging on for a long time and lack of communication. 

Has anyone had a similar experience and how was it resolved in the end? Thanks.

Hoenir

If the other party is unresponsive then it will be a tortuous route. 

Veteransaver

I presume you are just waiting for your excess to be refunded by the other party
It can easily take a year to get that back, but surprised the other insurers have not responded.
Is there a chance that the young driver wasn't actually insured, or there was some issue with his policy?

badmemory

Mine took nearly 2 years but that is several years ago.  Put it another way - don't hold your breath.

rigolith

Claim interest on your excess, might make them more inclined to act.

DullGreyGuy

smudge2013 said:

Has anyone had a similar experience and how was it resolved in the end? Thanks.

Some insurers have big backlogs in their claims departments and routine letters from third party representatives are at the bottom of the priority list. The problem is that it becomes a compounding problem as the third party reps just keep sending chasers that keep getting added to the bottom of the pile. 

In my day we were still using paper files so if one office got behind it was hard to redistribute work to other offices but occasionally it'd happen. You'd open a claims file and find 10 unanswered letters in it, log into the digital file and see actually they eventually telephoned last week and we responded verbally so the letters dont need a response just to be logged as received so a total no value add task.

Depending on who the insurer is sometimes it can be tricky to find the right office, in my day Aviva were still using a lot of legacy systems and so if you didnt call the right office, which would have been a different company that had been acquired/merged then no one else knew anything about it. They were supposed to have a basic overarching system that identified the office from the policy number but 90% of the time they claimed it didnt have the policy I was calling about but maybe try Peterborough or Bristol or some other random place. 

The quickest way to get things resolved is to pick up the phone but insurers dont have hotlines to each other and their agents cannot wait on hold for an hour to hope the person that picks up is in the right department. 

MattMattMattUK

Unfortunately if the other driver refuses to respond to their insurance company they are able to really drag things out. About fifteen years ago a courier pulling out of a side road drove into the side of my car whilst I was parked in a designated parking bay. I was unloading from the boot at the time (so could in no way be to blame), I had three witnesses (a taxi parked behind me with a dashcam, my friend who was with me and a pedestrian who was on the opposite pavement who the courier nearly ran over as he mounted the kerb to take the corner). Despite it being obviously the other driver's fault, both were with the same insurer the "other party's insurer" did not respond, it dragged out for 21 months before they finally changed it to a non-fault accident and I got my excess back (as well as an adjustment to premium). I had to chase quite heavily, I even got asked at one point if I was willing to accept a 50/50 "to close the case". 

It is one of those areas that needs to be legislated, refusing to respond and/or refusing to respond adequately within say 28 days should result in the other party losing their case by default, allowing the guilty party to drag things out indefinitely should not be an option. Similarly, lying about accidents should be prosecuted as insurance fraud and should potentially come with a driving ban as well. 

DullGreyGuy

MattMattMattUK said:

It is one of those areas that needs to be legislated, refusing to respond and/or refusing to respond adequately within say 28 days should result in the other party losing their case by default, allowing the guilty party to drag things out indefinitely should not be an option. Similarly, lying about accidents should be prosecuted as insurance fraud and should potentially come with a driving ban as well. 

So anyone going on a 6 week holiday of a life time should just be automatically guilty if a rogue accusation is made the day after they set off?

You may be better considering the pre-action protocol for cases involving injuries as the baseline for what a non-injury solution could look like. There the insurer has 21 days to acknowledge the initial letter of claim and then 3 months to investigate.

Some claims can be notified years after the event, it takes time for an insurer to trace their former insured who may well have moved address, changed their vehicle etc. 

MattMattMattUK

DullGreyGuy said:

MattMattMattUK said:

It is one of those areas that needs to be legislated, refusing to respond and/or refusing to respond adequately within say 28 days should result in the other party losing their case by default, allowing the guilty party to drag things out indefinitely should not be an option. Similarly, lying about accidents should be prosecuted as insurance fraud and should potentially come with a driving ban as well. 

So anyone going on a 6 week holiday of a life time should just be automatically guilty if a rogue accusation is made the day after they set off?

You may be better considering the pre-action protocol for cases involving injuries as the baseline for what a non-injury solution could look like. There the insurer has 21 days to acknowledge the initial letter of claim and then 3 months to investigate.

I could agree that three months might be the maximum allowable for the third party to fully submit all information, but it should not take the third party's insurer more than 28 days to acknowledge the claim. Additionally do people really go on holiday for six weeks and not check emails and not answer calls until they return?

DullGreyGuy said:

Some claims can be notified years after the event, it takes time for an insurer to trace their former insured who may well have moved address, changed their vehicle etc. 

That should probably change as well, the time limit on claims being made should not be years. 

DullGreyGuy

MattMattMattUK said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Some claims can be notified years after the event, it takes time for an insurer to trace their former insured who may well have moved address, changed their vehicle etc. 

That should probably change as well, the time limit on claims being made should not be years. 

The law of limitations has always been about balancing the rights of the claimant with giving certainty to the defendant. If you changed the law of limitation to 1 year, for example, then your CRA rights basically go out the window as the merchant too could reject your claim for an inherent fault of your washing machine after 15 months saying its statute barred. 

It still wouldn't totally stop the problem either as for minors the date starts from their 18th birthday so an infant injured would still have almost 19 years to make a claim.