Have I been screwed over...? Advice please

tushingham

Hey all,

A few months back I scrapped someones car - my fault. Theres is a work car from a lease company who i had to deal with.
I wanted to pay for the damage so i didnt lose my no claims so the lease company got one of their garages to gimme a quote. It was £800-£900 for a small scratched area. It was too much so i refused and told them to contact my insurance company.

The insurance company rang me today and told me they have agreed to pay out on the quoted amount. I asked how much and they said £618!!!!

What i want to know is how they can get away with overquoting me so blatantly and what i can do about it. I've now lost my no claims when i might have agreed to pay this lesser amount in the 1st place!!!!!!

Im so annoyed!
thanks in advance for any advice
t

V_tricky

Have you asked whether settling the £618 claim back to your insurer would make it count as an effective "non fault " claim?

bottom line is that most insurers only care about whether they've paid out or not - not including the costs of actually handling the claim (the person receiving the invoice, engineer valuation if necessary and paying it).

therefore, if you offer to pay back the sum they've paid - will they reinstate your NCD?

V_tricky

Labman wrote: »

You'll also have to take into account that although your NCD is reinstated you may face an increased premium.

Of course - there's been enough posts recently to explain this - you MAY face an increased premium - but the fact that their claim value by you paying that £618 back reduces their claim payment out to zero means that it SHOULD have no other impact than you just reporting the claim for information purposes only (which is part of your insurance contract), which in turn may - or may NOT have an impact on your insurance premium

tushingham

Thanks for the advice guys.

Is there anything i can do about this company. theres no way they should be able to make these over inflated claims. £300 odd is a ridculous. They shouldnt be able to do this to people.

t

raskazz

Insurers often get better rates for repairs than the public would, if the garage is 'approved' by them. Do you know whether the insurer actually paid the amount to the same garage who had originally given you the estimate, or used another garage?

In any case, you can pay the lesser figure to your insurer and only have a non-fault claim on record. So nothing much to be upset about!

uktyler

The cost is not jst for the repairs, how many days was the car off the road for repairs, was it collected from the person that was using it?

If the boot was on the other foot, and your car was hit, you would wanr a replacement car delivered to your house, and rightly so.