at fault car crash pay or claim insurance.

strawberryberry

I  reversed  into another car in the supermarket car park , apologised and said I would pay . My car has no damage - theirs has a scraped bumper from when I was turning. We just exchanged numbers - they rang me up and said it would be £1300 to fix (I didnt mind paying but thought that a bit high. ) and rather than go throughm my insurance and informing  their insurance they wanted to go though a " no fault claim company " .  I  wasnt  keen on going down that avenue  as these companies dont work for nothing and I could end up with a large bill or a big claim going through my insurance which would put my insurance up even more. Advice please - !1)should  say I need their insurance company details and put it through  on my insurance properly .2) Get a written quote and if its £1300 pay up . 3) Let them go through a no fault company where there insurance isnt involved. Ive got an old banger 20 years plus so with 10yrs + protected no claims , so my insurance isnt much. Just about to get a newer car so I am worried it will push that insurance right up. Any help please 

carly

 Go through your own insurance company
 and let them deal with it.  Your policy will almost certainly require you to tell them about any incident whether you claim or not.  If the third party is already ringing alarm bells by over claiming and avoiding her insurance co and bringing in an accident management company then I wouldn't have much confidence in her settling quickly and fairly. 

cw8825

Use insurance. It’s what it’s there for

chrisw

Go through your insurance and get rid of any hassle and worry. The actual size of the claim won't make any difference to the premium, with protected NCD you might find the increase isn't as bad as you fear.

DullGreyGuy

strawberryberry said:

I  reversed  into another car in the supermarket car park , apologised and said I would pay . My car has no damage - theirs has a scraped bumper from when I was turning. We just exchanged numbers - they rang me up and said it would be £1300 to fix (I didnt mind paying but thought that a bit high. ) and rather than go throughm my insurance and informing  their insurance they wanted to go though a " no fault claim company " .  I  wasnt  keen on going down that avenue  as these companies dont work for nothing and I could end up with a large bill or a big claim going through my insurance which would put my insurance up even more. Advice please - !1)should  say I need their insurance company details and put it through  on my insurance properly .2) Get a written quote and if its £1300 pay up . 3) Let them go through a no fault company where there insurance isnt involved. Ive got an old banger 20 years plus so with 10yrs + protected no claims , so my insurance isnt much. Just about to get a newer car so I am worried it will push that insurance right up. Any help please 

You have to declare the incident anyway, though a fault claim will have more impact than a non-claimed report. 

You cannot force their insurers to be involved, as a non-fault party they are free to choose the route they want. Premiums increases are typically calculated as a percentage so how much your premiums will go up depends on what your premiums are today. Assuming its it's a 3 figure number now it won't go up by anything close to £1,300 and whilst it will impact over 3-5 years the impact significantly decreases as the claim becomes more distant. 

If an accident management company is involved they will have a like for like credit hire car which will be notably more expensive than you could hire a car for. In addition to the repair bill there will be a 10% uplift plus circa £75-£100 for an engineer to consider if the repair costs are appropriate. 

strawberryberry

Thanks for your replies. Ive been speaking to the garage who did the quote and whilst its the dearest garage around it is what he quoted .He did say steer clear of one of the companys who do no fault claims as what starts out as small claim starts to go into the thousands and then they add on their costs also , so silly amounts. So if I go though my insurance does the other person have to give me their insurance details or can they just go through one of these companies ?

DullGreyGuy

strawberryberry said:

Thanks for your replies. Ive been speaking to the garage who did the quote and whilst its the dearest garage around it is what he quoted .He did say steer clear of one of the companys who do no fault claims as what starts out as small claim starts to go into the thousands and then they add on their costs also , so silly amounts. So if I go though my insurance does the other person have to give me their insurance details or can they just go through one of these companies ?

Your insurers can look up their insurance details within a couple of seconds but they won't bother doing so in a fault claim. Your insurers are likely to contact the third party and get them to deal with them directly rather than using either their own insurance or an accident management company. 

chrisw

You just inform your insurers of the incident. Any correspondence from the third party or accident management company just forward on to your insurers and let them sort it.