Should I Claim And From Whom?

chateauneufdupape

Thanks for all the advice, even if it conflicts slightly. The van driver has the car drivers details. We have now passed it over to an accident management company who are going to sort it out. Don't know why my wife didn't get the details of the car driver. It was my first question. Just for clarity, the van driver's hit the car behind with such force that it was propelled into the back of my wife's car. Both cars were stationary at the time, so debateable if the car driver behind was at fault.

Tucker

I previously worked for an insurance company. You should gain details of all vehicles involved in any event. However, the normal situation provided you have comprehensive cover, would be your own insurer would pay to rectify your car.

As you were hit from behind, it would eventually be recovered from the insurer of the vehicle that struck your car and that cars insurer would do the same from the van insurer. That said, it's common practice that while insurers would establish who was at fault, they would have agreed processes in place whereby actual funds may not actually change hands (i.e. insurer 'a' was at fault against insurer 'b', but last time it was the reverse - kind of a scoring process where it equals out over time).

If you have protected bonus, it won't affect you short or long term, unless you change insurers before blame is settled as a different insurer may not honour the protected bonus whilst the claim is still pending.

In truth, protected bonus schemes are largely a waste of money. If you make two or more claims they often load your premium on the gross figure and still give you the max bonus, but you are still paying more! You just don't know why, because it will still show you are getting full discount and often gets regarded as general insurance premium rises....... When your renewal has gone up, you will find many other insurers won't honour the max bonus because of your claim history. In the main it's 15% extra for very little and most pay the extra and never need it.

My advice is don't bother. I have never paid for it in 15 years and probably saved about £750 to £1000 in the process.