Advice on motor insurance claim

RaCinG_SnAkE_3

custardy wrote: »

unfortunatly water doesnt compress like air and it just buckles engine components

Water (or any other fluid) doesn't compress full stop! It's known as "hydraulic-ing" your engine, and can happen with water, oil or fuel etc..

custardy

i was keeping it free of techno babble

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

The engine being hydro-locked would be an obvious worry. An easy way to check this would be to open the air filter box and check for dampness.

What kind of car is it?

libbidf

Your insurers will only deal if you are fully comp so if the car has been taken to storage YOU are responsible for any costs, however, £25 a day is extortionate. The average is £12 per day.

If you are fully comp your insurers will arrange to get the vehicle to one of their approved repairers and send an assessor out their who will check an estimate the repairers have done and either agree costs or agree the car should be written off. They will by this point already taken care of any storage charges that may have been incurred.

If the vehicle is repairable you will have to pay your excess on completion of repairs to the garage and the insurers will foot the rest of the bill.

If the vehicle is a write off (usually due the fact the cost of repairs will be more than the vehicle is worth) the insurers will pay you a sum for the marjket value of your vehicle and deduct the excess from this. They will then take care of salvage.

Just out of interest, who are you insured with?

I work in insurance and unfortunatley it is a very busy time at the moment with all the bad weather so as annoying as it may be, you might need to have a bit of patience with them as claims will be taking longing than usual.

Hope this helps.

boots_babe

Hi,

Sorry I've not replied back before now. First a quick update. Basically the assessor came on Friday, spent 10 mins just looking around the car, then said it needed to be looked at by a mechanic.

I had thought the whole point of sending an assessor was that he would BE a mechanic!! So the car has sat from Mon - Fri waiting, and in that time we could have sent it to garage to be investigated. Then we would already have known what was wrong, assessor could have looked on Fri, and we would now know either way.

Instead we have wasted a week and nothing at all has happened. I shan't bore everyone with the details, but on top of that insurers have been absolutely terrible in every respect. They've been hopeless, don't seem to have a clue what they're doing, and we're ending up having to do all the legwork for them :mad: Really angry at them. I realise it will be busy due to flooding at the mo, but when they make stupid mistakes like trying to send the car to a bodywork-only garage then trying to blame us, it is just really upsetting. This is not their only error so far, it has a been a catalogue of them

Anyway, due to our own efforts, we finally had the car sent to a garage today - one of our choice because the insurance assessor said he 'couldn't find any in the area'???!!. Said will take 2-3 days to assess damage. At some point after that I guess we'll know whether the insurers think it is worth repairing or not.

In answer to some of the questions in recent posts:

• The insurance company is Privilege ( I do NOT recommend them)
• Dash lights etc work, as does radio, interior lights. At the time of being stuck, the dash wouldn't even turn on, but it has now started working again.
• It's a Mercedes C220 sports coupe, 51 plate, diesel.

custardy

2-3 days? sounds like they are in no hurry. takes a couple of hours to strip down as far as needed really

boots_babe

custardy wrote: »

2-3 days? sounds like they are in no hurry. takes a couple of hours to strip down as far as needed really

Well I have to stick up for the garage at this point. We've used them lots of times before - they're not a Merc main dealer, but they are a Merc specialist - and they have always been extremely good.

Best garage by far in our experience really, even done some things for us for free, and are pretty much the only one I've ever been to that I actually have any trust with. Plus we also rang the main Mercedes dealership and they also said it would take a few days to complete an investigation so doesn't seem completely out of line.

I guess the one good thing is that seeing as the assessor apparently 'couldn't find' a garage in our area, we get to use the one we know and trust. The garage had said if we got it taken there today, they could start looking asap. They also said that if it did need a lot of work / replacement, then it would take no more than a month all in. Which sounds fairly reasonable considering how much could be involved.

Anyhow, I guess we'll wait till tomorrow/Weds and see what they say. We've done the sums, and it would cost us a fair bit if they write it off, compared to if we were to get it repaired.

boots_babe

Thought it was about time I posted a quick update as to what's happened.

The car hasn't been written off, and it has now been repaired

Originally told 3-4 weeks to to all the work, but it only took around 2 so we are pleased.

All sorts of issues with insurers though - e.g. policy says we get a hire car, but when we called to enquire about this, they said we couldn't have a hire car because we didn't use an approved garage. We said that they DID approve the garage, but they said no, it was 'our' own garage, not one of their approved network. We reminded them that they had said they couldn't recommend a garage in our area, and actually asked US to recommend one to THEM! So it wasn't actually our fault we didn't use an approved garage, but made no difference. Very angry with them for not pointing this out at the time that they asked us to choose a garage.

Car seems to be running ok, had it back for a couple of days now. Got to keep it under 60mph/4000revs for 600 miles, then needs oil and filter change, then should be all back to normal.

One thing I could do with advice on. When we picked up car, we asked for copy of receipt - obviously we want to know what has been replaced etc in case of any future issues - an itemised receipt would be needed if anything went wrong with the new parts. Garage said we'd need to get it from insurer.

Rang Privilege today, they said due to 'the Data Protection Act' they are not allowed to give us this information!!!!! :mad:

Surely this is a load of rubbish. It is MY car, they have arranged the repairs on MY behalf; obviously I need to know what work has been done - why would it be a secret anyway?

I don't suppose there is some legal thing I can quote back at them as to why they have to give us this information? I am not at all happy just leaving it as it is.

movilogo

Usually by paying a small fee (probably less than £5) you can get what info anyone holds about you or any of your possessions (eg. car).

You need to play tit for tats!

Have you checked that they have repaired the engine and has not replaced the engine from a break yard? For example, did you check the engine number after repairing?

BTW, sell the car soon. It might give you more trouble in near future!

boots_babe

That is a good suggestion - unless anything better comes up I think I will try that. Although it would be extremely annoying to have to pay for this information, even it it was only 50p, it is the principle of the thing, it seems mad to me.

As you can probably tell from my other posts on this thread - I know nothing about cars, and certainly wouldn't have thought to check the engine number beforehand I'm afraid...however, at least we used our usual garage, and we do fully trust them as they've been very good in the past for both ourselves and friends. I really do not think they would have ripped us off - and I am someone who has an innate distrust of garages in general.

Re your comment to sell the car soon - yes I think you're probably right. We had intended to sell in Sept anyway, once we had paid it off. However, I think we will bring it a little earlier....possibly start advertising in May with a view to selling in June. We really can't sell much earlier as we'd lose out too much, but don't want to hold onto it now for too long just in case.