The other driver’s insurer is absolutely nothing to do with you.
Deal with YOUR insurer, put in a claim and demand that they get your car repaired immediately.
Whether the other driver was insured or not is irrelevant and not your concern.
Ideally, when the accident happened you should have photographed the other car, the driver and his/her details and taken steps to ensure that the details were not fake. For example by dialling any mobile number offered to you.
Your insurer should have immediately found a garage for you to get the car repaired and given you a courtesy car while it is fixed.
On my insurance, a courtesy car is not standard, it is an extra you can add if you wish.
I don’t know about Tess’s insurance.
Are you covered for a free courtesy card Tess?
If so, how long for?
I think I can have the use of one for a fortnight.
That’s what I thought was happening, now the courtesy car/repairer they’ve given me say they have to wait for their insurer to say they’re liable.
Well, if my car gets scrapped then they will have lost a customer anyway. I don’t understand any of it.
I’m hoping it’ll get clearer after the holidays, perhaps there’s not many staff in.
Did all the photographs and checking, looked up DVLA to make sure it was insured.
YOUR insurer should deal with your claim regardless of any liability. Even if YOU were liable it would be the same.
Call your insurer and insist that they authorise the garage to do the repairs. That’s what you pay your insurance premiums for. It has absolutely nothing to do with blame or liability.
Of course you must understand that by making any claim at all this affects your future premiums with this or any other insurer. If the other party subsequently admits liability then your claim will effectively be waived and not count against you in the future.
Either way, once you have submitted a claim your insurer should just get the car fixed at the garage no matter who is liable.
Going by what you say in the bits in bold Tessa, it sounds to me that your insurer may have passed this on to a “third party recovery company” This can happen when you accept a hire car - this company will accept claims for recovery of everything (including car hire) when they establish that they have a claim where the other party is at fault. However, they have to get the other party’s insurer to accept blame first. Sometimes this fact gets lost when promises of a hire car etc. are made. Did your insurance company tell you this at the time you first contacted them? It all takes time and these third party companies only accept claims where they are fairly certain that they can get the other party to accept the claim and if you go down this route it can take a fair bit of time. Christmas is always a very busy period as well, so maybe it is early days yet. You can, of course, refuse this sort of “service” and your own company will settle the claim, but if you are definitely not the one at fault (as it certainly seems you are) it is usually better for your own company to use one of these companies. This happened to me and I didn’t fully realise that my claim had been passed on to a recovery company. It seems to me they are a bit too quick to do this sort of thing, especially if they don’t explain what is going on. Everything was OK for me in the end and I didn’t lose my NCB and I did get a hire car I think I would ring your insurance and ask them what is going on.
Had a call from their insurers, getting couresty car tomorrow, they are writing my car off. I will keep it and get new door probably, I love my little car, so reliable!
Sending me figure shortly as I had to send photos of condition of rest of car etc.
I hope it will be enough to get it fixed, my son-in-law will sort out fixing it for me!
Got quotes, more than expected, they even offered more. Decided to get a new car.
However, trying to get a quote for a car I’m interested in seems impossible. Phoning took ages, press this and that then wait for ages, then the person knew nothing, ended up with supervisor.
My insurer has no idea about anything, I asked how I go about insuring a written off car, not happy with their reply, very vague, couldn’t get quote for the car I am looking at tomorrow.
When I looked on FB they have several pages just about complaints.
It should be interesting trying to cancel policy for old car, apparently they charge the whole number of month’s left.
Sick of it all.
Will change to the other insurer of the person who hit me, they’ve been speedy, helpful and efficient, once I got hold of them myself!
.Unless you know a bit about cars, particularly write-offs, Tessa, maybe it is better to haggle for the best price you can get from the insurer and accept the write-off price from them. Never settle for the first or even second offer they give you. A written off car is registered as such with the dvla and there can be problems with insurance. If you want to eventually sell it, it may have to be at a reduced price. If you get another car fairly quickly you could transfer insurance, rather than cancelling it and starting all over. I think you can do that and it may be cheaper. If it were me I would get myself down to a few showrooms and enjoy myself picking out a new car. They like to see a face before they start talking prices. Good luck and don’t forget to haggle a bit - they expect it.
Been out with wasband#2 and daughter (who knows a lot about cars). We found a suitable car, in fact it’s one I have admired for ages. With a bit of help from family I bought it.
Now just have to sort out insurance, I don’t want to stay with my insurers as they’re pants. I will cancel it as soon as my old car is collected as I need cover to drive hire car (huge thing, Mokka, not nice).
I won’t tell you what I bought, I have had enough stress without someone saying it’s rubbish!
Needless to say Japanese and automatic
Just want it all sorted now!
My little old Yaris, Pixie was so reliable, never any trouble with MOTs etc. It was 20 years old. Very sad to see it go but hey ho!
I somehow missed all this Tessa. Sorry to hear you had to go through all that. I am with Churchill insurance and when someone wrote my car off, they were excellent. I had a hire car the next morning and all was sorted and paid for within ten days.
