Car Insurance ... to claim or not to claim

Blue_Sky_Biker

Hello. My daughter crashed into another car as she was reversing. Apparently they spend up to try and get around her but she didn't see them and went into their passenger door.  Anyway, the car that she hit has got quotes for the repair which range from £500 to £1500. (Her car only has scratches so no rush to get that sorted) Their car that she hit is probably not worth £1500 so it will probably be a right off if she goes through her insurance. So, my question is, should she claim on her insurance or pay the £500 to get it repaired privately. She has 7 years no claims and an access of £250. She is concerned that she will lose her no claims and that her insurance next year will rise significantly. She is 28. Thank you for any advice you can give.

Voyager2002

Suppose she pays to settle this privately....

What happens next time she renews her insurance? What declaration must she make to the insurer about her record?

I do hope that she would not consider fraud (by making a false declaration)...

RogerPensionGuy

Looks like loss of NCD and then get risk loading making insurance even more expensive. 

My fagg packet view is pay person £300 or £400 cash and person just leaves the door alone.

IMHO generally making a claim for less than 1K works out negatively. 

The other trick insurance companies do is rent a car to person when doot getting fixed and that puts another 1 or 2K on the bill and makes the claim silly high so the companies win and people involved in accident pay lots more and others associated like a namwd driver on other cars.

These insurance companies are taking us to the cleaners and its 100% legal. 

DullGreyGuy

Blue_Sky_Biker said:

Hello. My daughter crashed into another car as she was reversing. Apparently they spend up to try and get around her but she didn't see them and went into their passenger door.  Anyway, the car that she hit has got quotes for the repair which range from £500 to £1500. (Her car only has scratches so no rush to get that sorted) Their car that she hit is probably not worth £1500 so it will probably be a right off if she goes through her insurance. So, my question is, should she claim on her insurance or pay the £500 to get it repaired privately. She has 7 years no claims and an access of £250. She is concerned that she will lose her no claims and that her insurance next year will rise significantly. She is 28. Thank you for any advice you can give.

First of all note that the excess is only payable if she claims for her own damage, there is no excess if it's a third party only claim. 

Ultimately she should declare the incident irrespective, though many "forget" to mention privately settled incidents. 

Does she have her NCD protected? If not she will drop to 3 years but NCD is a much smaller discount than it used to be. In the old days that would be going from 65% down to 40% discount but these days it could be much smaller, Aviva for example you'd be going from 35% to 30% if buying via a broker (on average).

The risk with private settlement is that the garage upsells the third party to use their accident management service which includes a credit hire car or then also to claim for whiplash so your £500 repair bill quickly becomes over £2,000

cw8825

this is literally what she pays insurance for, let them deal with it.

the loss of no claims will likely make a lot less impact than she actually believes.

there's no benefit to the other person for them to go private.