Advice please - car insurance claim, hit by white van man, not my fault, now he's claiming I hit him?
Answers:
Im sorry this has happened to you, its a horrible and stressful scenario. i'm going to presume you are insured fully comprehensive.
Firstly, im afraid it would not be as beneficial as you think to drop your case now. Because you have already informed your ins comp, if you drop the claim, you still have to inform all ins companies if you want a quote. Any further quotes from your comp or any other will show you having a " claim with no loss of NCB". This can still have an effect on your premium.
Secondly, if you do pursue this, and it is settled as a 50-50 claim (where the ins company cannot determine who is at fault), you will lose your NCB, unless it was protected. Check your ins policy forms.
Thirdly, check your docs to see if you have Legal Cover. This is usually added onto a policy almost automatically and is up to a value of £50,000 - £100,000. This will pay for all your legal costs, you will not have to pay a penny (no claim ever goes over this amount so dont worry about that either). If you dont have this included, check your home insurance policy for it, you can use this too.
You say your renewal is in October. If you choose not to fight this, your renewal will be based on you having had a claim even though you chose not to go through with it. As I said before, this is because you have already informed your ins comp about it. It will be at your ins comp's discretion if they are going to penalise you financially for it.they may do because they will be aware every company will. contrary to previous answers, If you choose to pursue this, your ins company will undertake a "worst case scenario" regarding your renewal premium. This means you will be sent a renewal stating you have an unsettled claim, they will reduce your NCB and increase your premium accordingly. The reason for this is that should the claim then be settled in your favour, your NCB and premium will be sorted and they will refund you all monies due to you (backdated to the start of your policy date). All ins comps do this because it is easier to refund money than it is to increase a premium and chase money , should it be settled as fault.
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You obviously don't live in the US?? Fight it!!
All your insurance will do (as it's your word against his) will call it knock for knock. This means your insurance will pay for repair and your no claim bonus will be lost.
Unless you can prove that it was his fault, your insurance company will say that you must pay for the repairs to your vehicle from your insurance.
You cannot go to court without proof and expect to win.
Sorry
If it's only £500 and you can afford it, then I'd just drop it and get the work done yourself. Your insurance would probably go up and if you lose the case you may be landed with legal fees etc mounting to thousands (though I thought this was what insurance was for, you'd have to check the small print in your policy). So long as nobody was injured then it's not worth the hassle.
My Wife had very similar problem. Idiot crashed into her, no witnesses then claimed it was her fault. End result is always the insurance companies go knock for knock. He claims from you, you claim from him. You lose you no claims and the lying bastard gets away with it. Life unfortunately is not fair which annoys the hell out of me!!
this is such a tricky one
I would check with your insurer whether you lose your no claims bonus if you claim and win- honestly this happened to me, not my fault but they said a claim was a claim and I lost the bonus.
If so then its only £500 and I would just let it go, you'd probably have to pay a couple of hundred anyway in your excess?
I think that these things are just such a load of hassle, if you let yourself you can get very stressed out about it.
I think the best thing to do would be to get a pinyata of a white van, have a party, drink loads of tequila and beat the crap out of the pinyata with a baseball bat. Then never let it bother you again.
i had the same experience last year-though i was fortunate enough to have witnesses. the chances are whats happened here is his employers have told him that he will have to cover any damage to the van (assuming of course he was working at the time). if you decide to scrap it out these things can often be long-winded affairs so the likelyhood of it being resolved (especially as there were no witnesses) by october are very slim. you say he was apologetic this is an admission of guilt. unless he owns up you will probably lose your no-claims bonus. if you do decide to scrap it out-threaten to take the matter to court. under no circumstances do you contact the other driver yourself-let the insurance companies do it-thats what you pay them for. nb if the matter has not reached a conclusion by october your premium should remain as it was until such a time as any proprtion of blame can be attributed to yourself same as if the other driver admits liability (100%) you would not lose your no-claims bonus. good luck nb further to earlier answer threatening legal action will usually bring the desired results as kg quite rightly states the third party will have to fill out forms/answer questions etc-if he was to blame for the incident he won't relish this one bit.
Many insurance companies apply knock-for-knock which means they will pay for the cost of repairs (less the excess on your policy) and the third party insurers will pay for any repairs to white van man's vehicle (again less any excess on the policy).
Your insurance premium due in October will rise as a result of this accident and of course you will lose some of your no-claims bonus. (These are your UNINSURED LOSSES) Having quantified in monetary terms the losses you have suffered as a result of this accident (include in your losses the cost of hiring a replacement vehicle whilst yours is being repaired) and issue proceedings in YOUR County Court (Small claims Court).
AS the saying goes: Non illigimati Carborundum - don't let the ba**ards grind you down - fight every inch of the way!!
Good luck
Fight it, You say you told your Ins company straight away. Did you give full explanation of how accident occurred, including details of the van & driver and his explanation of reason why he hit you. If so then your Ins company should have got in contact with him (or his company if company vehicle). If your Ins company has done that then the offending driver would have had to fill in forms with his explanation of the accident. The important point here are the initial comments made by the driver. Did you take any photos of the damage, if not and veh is still damaged take some. A good accident investigator will be able to establish if the damage caused to you vehicle is consistent with what he is claiming happened. On reading your question, your damage was to offside wing. He claims you ran into the back of him. In that case 1) damage to your car would be to the front end not offside wing. 2) If you had run into the rear of his van It is unlikely that his van didn't suffer some form of damage, such as cracked rear taillight glass, scuff marks, or transfer of paint from your car onto his. Keep fighting it. Get you Ins company to pursue it, That's what you pay em for. Good luck
I'm in America, so I'm not so sure about claims in your country, but here the insurance company would have their lawyer representing you if it goes to court. All signs sure point that you weren't the one who cuased the accident, so hopefully it does go to court and you win. In the meantime, I'd put a throw-a-way camera along with paper and pen to take a signed statement and pictures if this ever happens again to you. Find witnesses right at the scene. This will save you in the future, but I hope, knock on wood, that all is safe driving for you and your wife. Good luck.
You have one very important and useful piece of evidence that supports your claim.You reported the accident to your insurers. I presume you took his name/address/Reg No/Insurance details. His slow denial does not look good to those who would assess liability. He *looks* as if he is trying to avoid blame. Regardless of the fact that he says no damage was done to his vehicle. He is still obliged to answer questions as and when raised.
However, you have very little control over the allocation of blame. Insurance companies sort it between themselves. Often, the insurance company is looking to reduce its costs - and avoiding legal battles is one way they do that.
As he is not claiming anything from you, your insurance company is probably saying 'What do we have to lose?. If we fight - we might get our £500 plus costs, but we don't need the hassle - so let's put the blame on our driver, who will likely drop it and pay for the work themselves rather than see their premium go up'.
Your insurance company will laugh at you if you say 'I want to fight this' as they'll say 'Go ahead - sue him if you want - we're staying clear'.
Hence protected no-claims is the way to go. You would then be able to force yourinsurers to pay and also not see an increase in premium. However, there's no such thing as a free lunch - and you *pay* for protected no claims.
Sorry. I think you'll have to swallow the bill on this one. Next time (god forbid), take a camera in the car and if somebody is silly enough to admit liability - get them to sign a piece of paper.
Your insurance company should be fighting this battle for you! Call your agent, and tell them to get on it.
One look at your damages will prove he is lying - if you drove into the back of him, you wouldn't have damage to the side of your vehicle!
It won't cost you a penny. Don't let him get away with it.
The golden rule here is to stick to your guns. You do have a witness..Your husband. Although he won't hold as much weight as an independent one, he is still a witness.
Write down as much of the original conversation as you can remember, when he first admitted liability too you, and send it to your insurance company. Any further conversations, including dates, times.anything you can remember, will all go towards substantiating your claim.
I have seen this sort of thing happen all the time. I know this is advice after the horse has bolted, so to speak, but it is always advisable to call the police, no matter how small the bump. They may not attend, but it will be on record that you called them.
Get the names, addresses and phone numbers of as many witnesses as you can. I know this is not always possible, but if you can, do it.
As well as the statutory requirement, of exchanging names, addresses, registration marks, etc. Taking photos of the scene and the damage, and the other driver, is always a good idea. Many people have camera phones today, and they are very useful for such things.
Hope this helps, and good luck with it.
If you report it through your insurance carrier you probably will lose your accident free discount. The best advice I can give is: always call the police. Even if it's very minor. They will indicate who was at fault on the accident report and that is what the insurance company use. That's how it is in my state anyway.
Is there a PD report. If so, the insurance company will normally rule based on what the report sells.
In the U.S. we have an arbitration process in cases where there are disputed facts regarding who is at fault in an accident. The insurance companies aggree to be bound by the results to help keep costs down. The will look at things like the PD report (if any) damage photos showing points of impact
If you loose in arbitration (i.e. you are at fault) your insurance will pay under liability for the other person's damages. If there is not enough evidence to determine who is at fault, your insurance would have to cover the vehicle. Either way, you would lose your bonus.
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