Hi Dave,

Good Luck m8, I hope you fix it soon


Rob

lady just called they are willing to pay but she said get it repaired then ask body shop to invoice them direct, i Said body shop are going to need an agrement from them to do that, so she has gone away to speak to their finance dept.

What did I tell you?

she sent this "Reference our telephone call. Once work has been completed on your vehicle can you please ask both companies to invoice our finance department on the below details:"

that still has me worried that they could back out of paying when the work is complete?

ive emailed the bodyshop so hopefully they can get a more solid conformation that b&m will pay, i'll pop in to hire place and explain the same to them,

When a dog ran out in front of my sister's car and damaged the front end (the dog was ok thankfully), a local bodyshop was happy to do the work and invoice the owner directly. I'm not so sure a hire company would be interested in doing that though. Can't the garage supply a hire car and just make up one invoice?

they only have funny little cars not much room for all of us and a walking stick, not sure if any are auto

You're very lucky they're dealing with it themselves. If their insurers got involved they could have started all sorts of nonsense. I've seen a claim for a car that was smashed up by a car wash where the car wash's insurers tried to wriggle out of it - they'll try anything to not pay out.

I'd have thought any half decent hire company should be OK with that, if they can contact them in advance and get a faxed authorisation or something. It's all good business they wouldn't have otherwise. I'd have thought you could ring the hire company and explain and leave the two of them to sort it out and tell you when they've agreed it all. It might need an independent hire company though, not a chain.

For a car wash business it is probably a daily occurrence, but for a store chain it is more of a "one-off" event and they would be keen to avoid seeing pictures in the local paper of Mr&Mrs Dave grumpily pointing at the damaged body of their Croma outside B&M!
You know what I mean? The local papers specialise in pictures like that.

Thinking about it a bit more, I'd suggest getting something in writing from them to confirm that they will pay before going ahead.

You can't expect them to state "we accept liability", as any legal-minded person would see red at that, but something along the lines of "we will pay any reasonable repair costs and expenses incurred".

If your own insurance is fully comp, your insurance company will handle the whole claim. Downside is that your premium increases next year. Despite not losing any no-claims discount, by having a crunch you demonstrate that you are higher risk.

The advice above is good, ask nicely to start with, with detail, no threats.

sorry i thought i posted last update. i popped into the bodyshop yesterday as they are near the hire place i went to, body shop said they are arranging to get the money upfront from b&m before they book me in.

portland_bill said:

If your own insurance is fully comp, your insurance company will handle the whole claim. Downside is that your premium increases next year. Despite not losing any no-claims discount, by having a crunch you demonstrate that you are higher risk.

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And why would Dave want to do that, having to pay an excess and have his insurance increase?

Downside is it cost in the long run, upside is that the insurance company will know how and who to deal with, and will get a better result if the company quibbles. Heads/tails?

portland_bill said:

Downside is it cost in the long run, upside is that the insurance company will know how and who to deal with, and will get a better result if the company quibbles. Heads/tails?

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No they won't, likelyhood is they wouldn't even bother to recover the claim from the other side as its not a vehicle claim, would probably go down as storm damage and then Dave suffers for the next 3-5 years.

If you pass it to the insurance company, they work for you, covering your risks. Just tell them upfront that you only wish to claim if they can recover full costs from the other party. They will look at it on that basis. Worked for me.

portland_bill said:

If you pass it to the insurance company, they work for you, covering your risks. Just tell them upfront that you only wish to claim if they can recover full costs from the other party. They will look at it on that basis. Worked for me.

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Not how it works unfortunately. They won't repair Daves vehicle until that's sorted, and if it goes to court and 3rd party are not found liable who will cover court costs? Either Dave, or his insurance, and if they've costs it'll be classed as a loss and still affect Dave

I'm really sick of how insurance works in this country. Fully comp cover I'd expect MY insurance company to repair / replace my car straight away AND then persue reparations from guilty parties.

Or am I missing the point?

ChrisUK said:

I'm really sick of how insurance works in this country. Fully comp cover I'd expect MY insurance company to repair / replace my car straight away AND then persue reparations from guilty parties.

Or am I missing the point?

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While I fully agree with you Chris unfortunately it's down to costs and loss limitation.

Take Dave's case as prime example, £1k(ish) of Damage.

Dave could go to his insurance company. They can repair it and pay out £1k. They've then got 2 choices.

1) Tell Dave that its an insured peril, and that they'll cover it and it'll go down as a claim against him and the insurance company has lost only £1k.

2) Pursue 3rd Party legally, could cost £000's. Should they win they'll get this back plus the £1k, if they however loose suddenly Dave's claim has cost £1k plus £000's.

Now this gets passed on to everyone else who is insured ultimately, but its still in an insurance co's interest to try and mitigate a claim cost as much as possible.

If Dave has legal cover on his insurance policy, he could possibly use this to pursue the 3rd party, but legal cover varies from company to company in what it includes and if it'll cover this type of incident.

This is also why a lot of certain types of cases will often go down as 50/50 / knock for knock (roundabout collisions for example) where they may be a lack of clarity to the liable party.

Yeah I can see your point. If it weren't for crash for cash scams from all walks of europe scum coming to the UK they could afford to do that with what we pay...

dave said:

i'm smoke free since jan 23rd, mrs dave a month smoke free, daughter been about 6 weeks smoke free too

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Wrong thread

Think this is ment to be in Grumpy thread in reply to @yasifa?

Congrats anyway