We're aware that some users are experiencing technical issues which the team are working to resolve. See the Community Noticeboard for more info. Thank you for your patience.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

Car insurance fault/non fault claim

Options
My car was hit whilst parked outside my house at 3am in the morning by an uninsured driver. The vehicle had false plates and was abandoned a few hundred metres up the road and the driver absconded. The police have now advised that they have ascertained the vehicles real registration and it was not registered to anyone so we have no idea who this person was

Aviva have deemed it repairable but beyond economical repair in their eyes. I am currently deciding what course of action to take. 

Aviva have told me that because the third party is unknown, then it will go down as a fault against me and will therefore affect future insurance policies.

This seems absurd....is there anything I can do? I am being penalised for being insured!

Comments

  • daveyjp
    daveyjp Posts: 13,537 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    In the absence of anyone for Aviva to claim their costs from you are now claiming against your fully comp policy so its a claim against you.

    Always has been, always will be.

    What you do is shop around at renewal time.
  • Aretnap
    Aretnap Posts: 5,754 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    "Fault" in insurance jargon has a different meaning to how it is used in everyday speech.

    Insurers categorise claims not according to who was to blame for the incident, but according to whether they recovered the costs of the repairs etc from a third party. You might think this is a strange way to categorise them, but it at least has the advantage of being completely objective and factual. Two people can have very different opinions on who was to blame for an accident, but whether someone else ended up paying for the damage is a simple matter of fact and ready to establish. 

    In most cases this does roughly correspond to "fault" - hence the jargon. Or at least, if the accident was someone else's fault, and you can prove it,  and you can find them, you insurer will be able to recover their costs from then, and it will go down as a "no fault" claim. However it does lead to the situation where a tree falling on your car, or your car being damaged by wild animals, or by a hit and run driver do go down as fault claims. 

    Personally I think the use of the term "fault"is misleading and it would be better if insurers used a different term to classify claims. Apparently it's a hangover from the days when there was always an intermediary between the customer and the insurer, who understood the jargon and didn't find it confusing. However if Aviva did call it an "outlay not recovered claim" instead of a "fault claim" it wouldn't actually help you much. The effect on your premium next year would be the same, it would just save a little on confusion and possibly hurt feelings.

    There's not much you can do I'm afraid other than decide whether the car is valuable enough to be worth making a claim for - if it's an old banger maybe not, but if it's with a few grand then it almost certainly is going to make sense to claim. 

    Your not being organised for being insured,v rather being insurer gives you the only line if protection that you're going to get in this scenario. If you were uninsured nobody would be offering to pay for repairs(replacement of your car and your just have to grin and bear it.
  • user1977
    user1977 Posts: 17,804 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Seventh Anniversary Photogenic Name Dropper

    I am being penalised for being insured!
    How do you make that out? You think you'd be in a better position if you didn't have insurance?
  • DullGreyGuy
    DullGreyGuy Posts: 18,613 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Second Anniversary Name Dropper
    My car was hit whilst parked outside my house at 3am in the morning by an uninsured driver. The vehicle had false plates and was abandoned a few hundred metres up the road and the driver absconded. The police have now advised that they have ascertained the vehicles real registration and it was not registered to anyone so we have no idea who this person was

    Aviva have deemed it repairable but beyond economical repair in their eyes. I am currently deciding what course of action to take. 

    Aviva have told me that because the third party is unknown, then it will go down as a fault against me and will therefore affect future insurance policies.

    This seems absurd....is there anything I can do? I am being penalised for being insured!
    You can choose not to claim and so would be in the same position as if you hadn't been insured if you feel you are being penalised for being insured. 

    As explained by others the concept of "fault" from an insurer perspective is just about net outlay at the end of the claim and nothing to do with "blame". There are certain insurers out there who make "promises" about things like uninsured drivers however you have to read their terms properly to understand the extent of them. Aviva Direct do have an uninsured driver promise but firstly it only relates to your excess and secondly this would be considered an untraced driver not an uninsured driver 
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 351K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.6K Spending & Discounts
  • 244K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 598.9K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 176.9K Life & Family
  • 257.3K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.