Insurance - "Approved Repairer" Damage to car

[adam02uk]

I was in an accident may 2012, vehicle was repaired at an approved repairer and went back about 4 times due to rubbish repair jobs (body work out of line, missing parts, fault parts etc.) all was rectified after several months.

Now just over a year later I've come to changing the bulbs in my headlights (both of which are brand new headlights) to find that both of the clips on the wiring looms that go into the headlight are broken, one completely shattered and have just been bodged back on to the back of the headlights, also one of the "mushroom" reflectors have been cello-taped into the light fixtures and these are supposed to be brand new.

 

This damage did not exist prior to the accident (had the car 6 month prior to crashing and had already changed the bulbs once so know this didnt exist) so was either done during the accident (highly doubtful due to screwdriver scrapes on the broken plastic) or done by the garage when doing repairs.

 

So been back in touch with the insurance as have a 5 year guarantee with the repairs, they arranged an "independent" assessor to come out, he's been out today to look - and i do mean just look! he didnt even see the clips only pictures I had taken because he didn't want to take the light out, anyway he had also called the man from the garage who did the repairs to come look at the damage also and so he came out - the reason I quote "independent" is that these 2 were like best mates and had clearly known each other years and were sat in the car talking for 15mins after the assessment.

 

Now the garage have accepted that there is no excuse for the cello tape in the headlight and are willing to rectify this, but refused to admit it would have been them who caused damage to the clips and said "one of my guys would have told me if they did this and we would have sorted it back then" clearly knowing its a costly job to fix as it would need new wiring looms, but as he said he has no evidence that they didn't cause the damage as it wasn't mentioned when they did the repairs or questioned with me and they don't have any pictures showing they were in tact.

 

Now I know what the call from the insurance is going to be like next week, them saying the garage are saying it wasn't them who caused it, but I want to know what grounds I have to take this forward as they are the ONLY people who have done anything with my lights between my bulb changes and was clearly damage caused by them or they would have mentioned it as part of the claim.

 

I can see the timescale between them repairing the car and me noticing it being an issue, but this is not something you would ever notice without stripping out the lights so have only just noticed this.

 

Any advice on action I can take against the insurance/garage if they do refuse to take liability for the damage caused?

 

Thanks

 

Adam

[heliosuk]

You need to take action against the insurance company as it they who paid the bill and contracted with the garage. It's perfectly plausible that these were damaged as a result of the accident and subsequent repair works however the contract to repair is between the insurance co and the repairing garage. Don't worry about the pally thing, it's nothing untoward. The requirement to replace the clips is easily overlooked in the estimates given and most clips these days are a one fit only.

 

Stick at the insurance co, the garage is not necessarily at fault as they can only do what the bill payer tells them to do.