General Insurance Question ...

[dr_mat 0]

Hi all,

 

Got a bit of a dilemma here, wondered if there's anyone can answer a few questions for me.

 

Hypothetically speaking (if anyone is watching ;) ), imagine if someone were to drive into the back of your car, causing no visible damage, but shoving the car forward a foot or so as a result of the impact. On inspection imagine it appeared that the car behind had hit the towing eye mostly, and taken the brunt of the impact itself in the middle of it's front number plate.

 

This type of thing, of course, makes you wonder if there's any structural damage underneath, so the idea of NOT getting the car checked out is simply not acceptable.

 

And the car that hit you is a company car (or even better a car that was hired from e.g. AVIS *by* a company).

 

So. What to do? I know a good mechanic who could check the car out structurally. But here's the tricky bit... Would we:

 

a) let OUR insurance company deal with it

 

b) call HIS insurance company and let them deal with it

 

c) call the guy who hit you and ask him to pay directly

 

 

We don't like the idea of a) because wouldn't this affect our claims record, even if all costs are recovered from the 3rd party? b) we don't know what impact this would have on our own insurance record, either...! Presumably we'd still have to report the accident at renewal time? And what about c). What's the excess like on hire cars? His company would pay anyway, presumably, so what's the deal here? Anyone have experience of this?

[GIXXERUK 0]

bump out of curiousity

[vr6storm 0]

A) IIRC once the claim as been processed and costs recovered from 3rd party then its a non-fault claim with full recovery(or words to that effect)..........it shouldn't affect your NCB IIRC

 

B)doing it this way could take a bit longer than A shouldn't affect your record as its not a claim on your insurance

 

C)depends on how good a relationship you have with him and how honest he is too............tho i have a funny feeling you know him very well :wink:

 

 

 

as for car hire XS's

 

Europcar IIRC do 3 levels of XS...................£500,£100 and zero.........it will be mentioned on any hire car agreement,you obviously pay more to reduce it

[dr_mat 0]

Thanks for that info.

 

I think the impact on insurance really depends on the company. Having checked out with a few companies on the web, it won't affect your no-claims if they make a full recovery of the costs true enough, but it does impact your premium (we checked this out with some anonymous quotes, as it happens), and some companies increased the premium after declaring a non-fault no-claim-made accident. Of course, you have to declare it, even if you don't make a claim against your own insurance, because there's a big shared insurance database..

 

I think the best outcome is - car checked over by reliable mechanic, given clean bill of health, bad guy pays garage direct. We incur no costs, no claims made, no insurance record.. But I don't know if that's going to be possible.. His car *would* have had a fair amount of damage to the front bumper, in this hypothetical situation, so I doubt it'll come to less than the excess and he'll wind up claiming. We shall see.

 

Any other experiences and thoughts welcome in the meantime.. :)

[chubbybrown 0]

Just checked insurance for a car,standard is £500

 

ANy chassis problems and at our old cars age it would be written off ( Hypothetically speaking )

 

Good luck