Accident management company questions.

Ballistic87

Hello guys. I recently got into a non fault accident were the car behind me hit me from behind on a wet foggy night. Anyway during the commotion luckily there was a car recovery driver passing by who offered to recover my car, and put it into storage locally and also said he will pass on my info to his company who can deal with all the boring insurance stuff. Seemed a really good idea at the time. As I’ve dealth with insurance companies before and know how much hassle it can be. 

Anyway fast forward a couple of weeks and they recently got in touch with me explaining that they have submitted an engineers report with the value of the car to the third party insurance (car is a write off), the value they have told me seems quite alot lower then I expected, it’s less then any similar cars of that year/mileage on the internet and quite a few grand less then what I paid for it. I’ve obviously let them know this but I think they have already submitted it to the third party insurance. 

I find it hard to believe that they actually valued my car this much lower considering there are none out there for this price  and normally they are supposed to get you the best deal, after all that’s there job. I’ve asked to see the engineers report but so far they have been kind of evasive with it and it’s only been phone conversations. I haven’t seen anything physical on my end. 

The question I wanted to ask is basically could they be lying to me about the value they have submitted? For example could they have submitted a value of 12k and told me they have submitted 10k, and then pocket the 2k difference if the third part insurance does pay the full 12k??

I do get the occasional call from the third party insurance as they have given me a hire car, but have been hesitant to bring this up with them as I don’t want to complicate things and give them an excuse to prolong the process or even worst not pay out for some silly reason related to this. 

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks and will reply when I can. Cheers. 

flaneurs_lobster

Ballistic87 said:

Hello guys. I recently got into a non fault accident were the car behind me hit me from behind on a wet foggy night. Anyway during the commotion luckily there was a car recovery driver passing by who offered to recover my car, and put it into storage locally and also said he will pass on my info to his company who can deal with all the boring insurance stuff. Seemed a really good idea at the time. 

The suspicious cynic in me immediately thinks that it was an extraordinary bit of good luck that a car pick-up truck happened to be passing just as you got rear-ended..... 

Ballistic87

flaneurs_lobster said:

Ballistic87 said:

Hello guys. I recently got into a non fault accident were the car behind me hit me from behind on a wet foggy night. Anyway during the commotion luckily there was a car recovery driver passing by who offered to recover my car, and put it into storage locally and also said he will pass on my info to his company who can deal with all the boring insurance stuff. Seemed a really good idea at the time. 

The suspicious cynic in me immediately thinks that it was an extraordinary bit of good luck that a car pick-up truck happened to be passing just as you got rear-ended..... 

huh? Not sure what you mean by that but thanks anyway. 

Ballistic87

I’m gonna guess there is no one here who is familiar with how the accident management companies operate? 

400ixl

Ballistic87 said:

I find it hard to believe that they actually valued my car this much lower considering there are none out there for this price  and normally they are supposed to get you the best deal, after all that’s there job. I’ve asked to see the engineers report but so far they have been kind of evasive with it and it’s only been phone conversations. I haven’t seen anything physical on my end. 

What makes you think they are in any way looking to get the best deal for you? They are looking to make the most money they can for themselves. You are just the mule they do it through.

If they can drag things out whilst you have a credit hire company they will. Once they are out of that option they will submit a report and value to the 3rd party along with their costs to get the 3rd party to settle. You are going to have to fight both the accident management company and the 3rd party insurer lowballing.

By going via a 3rd party shark you have also waived your rights to take anything to the ombudsman.

Ballistic87

400ixl said:

Ballistic87 said:

I find it hard to believe that they actually valued my car this much lower considering there are none out there for this price  and normally they are supposed to get you the best deal, after all that’s there job. I’ve asked to see the engineers report but so far they have been kind of evasive with it and it’s only been phone conversations. I haven’t seen anything physical on my end. 

What makes you think they are in any way looking to get the best deal for you? They are looking to make the most money they can for themselves. You are just the mule they do it through.

If they can drag things out whilst you have a credit hire company they will. Once they are out of that option they will submit a report and value to the 3rd party along with their costs to get the 3rd party to settle. You are going to have to fight both the accident management company and the 3rd party insurer lowballing.

By going via a 3rd party shark you have also waived your rights to take anything to the ombudsman.

Hi. Is there a way to see what the amount the insurance company are offering ? Also who do they make the payment out to? Me or the management company? 

penners324

You should only be discussing this your insurance company. They will have the contract with the accident management company.

If you've not done this then why not?

Ballistic87

penners324 said:

You should only be discussing this your insurance company. They will have the contract with the accident management company.

If you've not done this then why not?

It’s one of the first things that was done. I don’t know why you would assume I didn’t do the basic of things. lol. 

Ballistic87

Received my first offer today. Definitely lower then anything similar on the market. 

Debbie9009

I also find it a bit of a coincidence that a recovery truck just happened to be passing especially one with ties to an accident management company. 

As you have reported the accident to your insurer, why aren’t they dealing with this for you?  I would call them and see if they can sort it for you.

Accident management companies do not have your best interests at heart, be careful with the courtesy car, I have known a few cases where the cost of the courtesy car has turned out to be very high, and the third party insurers haven’t paid the whole bill, they do this under you not mitigating your losses.  For example a friend had a small corsa that was in an accident, the accident management company put her in a top of the range BMW with a ridiculously high cost, the TP insurers only paid the cost of a small courtesy car, she had to pay the rest. 

DullGreyGuy

Ballistic87 said:

The question I wanted to ask is basically could they be lying to me about the value they have submitted? For example could they have submitted a value of 12k and told me they have submitted 10k, and then pocket the 2k difference if the third part insurance does pay the full 12k??

In my claims days we'd have sent a cheque in your name to the AMC so they have no ways of cashing it unless you think they are also fraudulently opening bank accounts in customer's names?

Ballistic87 said:

Received my first offer today. Definitely lower than anything similar on the market. 

Was the offer inline with the engineers number or different?

Ultimately they have commissioned an engineer to act as an expert witness for you who has valued it as £X, they will pass on the engineers bill of circa £120 to the third party insurer for reimbursement. You can imagine what happens when someone brings an expert witness to court and then starts arguing against their own expert!

When the third party insurer receives the valuation report they will typically do their own valuation based on the same details, their offer will be based on that not the engineers but they may cap it at what you've asked for rather than offer more. Its probably of little surprised that our engineers virtually never thought the cars were undervalued and fairly regularly considered them over valued given the engineer was in your employment. 

Debbie9009 said:
Accident management companies do not have your best interests at heart, be careful with the courtesy car, I have known a few cases where the cost of the courtesy car has turned out to be very high, and the third party insurers haven’t paid the whole bill, they do this under you not mitigating your losses.  For example a friend had a small corsa that was in an accident, the accident management company put her in a top of the range BMW with a ridiculously high cost, the TP insurers only paid the cost of a small courtesy car, she had to pay the rest. 

Its not a courtesy car, its a credit hire car.

The only way your story hangs true is if your friend lied about what her vehicle was and therefore also would require the accident management company not to be dealing with the vehicle damage. 

AMCs are for profit companies, so we agree your best interests are not their sole priority. They are however reasonably competent and will know the laws around credit hire and not expect anyone to pay for a "top of the range" BMW for a damaged Corsa. There are times when a company won't have an appropriate vehicle to give but you are talking about 1-2 classes up the spectrum not a group 2 car to a group 50 car. Likewise they may push that maybe the Corsa was a group 3 car were they to give them a group 3 but if by some extraordinary set of circumstances the only car that was available was the said BMW then they'd tell the customer they cannot help or would hire it out on a group 2-3 rate. 

Similarly with credit hire agreements you only become liable for a shortfall in payment if 1) you fail to support the company in recovering its outlay or 2) you've acted fraudulently.

If your friend lied and said they had a BMW XM rather than a Corsa then that would explain both the replacement vehicle and why they had to pay for it. I struggle to see how they wouldn't have worked it out though when they were calling the garage for updates on the repair unless the garage was also in on the scam.