claim made against me....!

[busa]

Hi all...... great forum btw....

 

about a year ago my wife was reversing our car off our drive, as see was doing so she saw a van approching so she stopped, the van slowed down but did not not stop and tried to go round our car but caught the n/s corner of our bumper. there was a little damage to our car but being a bit old we wernt bothered, on the van there also was a little damage.....not much just a scrape on a plastic trim. after talking to the van driver, we exchanged details i took some pictures of the scene and he left. we phoned our insurance company and told them out of courtesy what had happen and we would not be claiming........that was that.......!.....until recently....we bought a newer car, asked our insurance company for a quote and the quote was not that good, found another quote with a differant company and decided to go with them, i called my previous company for proof of no claims.....when it came back it showed that when my wife had that little knock the other party had made a claim against me for over £2500 and i had no idea.....!!!!! not even a letter to say a cliam was being made agianst me to give me or my wife the chance to make a statement.....now beacuse we didnt have no cliams protection my 22 years claim free motoring is now down to 4.........

 

any ideas......or am i going to be wasting my time trying to do anything about this????

 

 

Cheers

 

Nick:x

[ladybird17]

Hi Nick - sorry I am not coming up with the answer, but this seems preposterous! Surely an insurer has an obligation to inform you if someone is making a claim against you - and certainly hear your side of things, this can't be right. I'm sure someone will come along soon and lead you down the correct route.

[busa]

of course i rang the insurance company right away and got a reply of......"it was your wifes fault so you dont get the right to make a statement"........

 

excuse my french.......b o ll ocks......!!!

[ladybird17]

how do they know it was your wife's fault? - they never asked!

[busa]

i suppose they took a statement from the van driver and decided then....? i thought an insurance company should act in the intrest of thier customers.....not the other party.......

 

the worlds gone mad.........!

[busa]

oh yeah.....i was also told that if i didnt like it i could always go to the insurance onmbusman......sorry spellings rubbish....!!

[ladybird17]

I'm astonished! - So you could smash into someone, swap details, and then go away & lie to the insurers that it wasn't your fault, and they just believe you? It beggars belief.

[never shay die]

As the reversing party, you had the greater duty of care and the van had right of way. As such, these cases would usually go down as the fault of the reversing party.

 

That doesn't mean that your insurer shouldn't have at least made an effort. Did you inform them when you reported the claim that you disputed liability? If so, then they should have requested a diagram and description from you to assess liability.

 

If they felt you had a case, they should have disputed liability with the other insurer and given them details of your allegations.

 

If at any point they decided you were at fault and had no option but to deal with the other party's claim, they should have informed you of this and explained the reasons why.

 

If you admitted liability when the claim was reported though I can't see that they've really done anything wrong, although perhaps they should have informed you that the other party had made a claim.

[busa]

yeah we've gone through this, when we rang our insurance company at no time did we admit liabilty, as i siad we rang them just inform them of the incident, tell them we didnt wish to claim against the other party that had hit us, not we hit them.

i do understand the implications of reversing out of a drive but i think apart from having someone stand in the middle of the road waving a huge red flag wearing a bright yellow chicken outfit.......we took suffiicant precations before making the manouver.....! its not like we are new to it....we've done it for alomost 15 years!!!!

 

anyway thats not the point.....the thing thats got me is underhandedness of it all.......!

[never shay die]

If you didn't admit liability then they should not have paid the other party's claim without consulting you first.

 

Like I said though, looking at the circumstances they would most probably have made the decision to deal with the other claim anyway. Although you took necessary precautions before reversing, they would have been unable to argue that the van driver should have excercised greater caution than you. After all, he had right of way and you were reversing into the main road.

 

You could make a complaint through their internal complaints procedure. However, I'm guessing they will argue that if they HAD done things properly you wouldn't be any better off for it.

 

I understand it's extremely frustrating for you, but you're unlikely to recieve any substantial compensation for this.

 

It's worth a go, though.

[richthegill]

Not sure if this has been mentioned or not but 4 years is generally the max for no claims bonus regardless of how many years you actually have. so you may well have full NCB, they may well have just taken the protection off.

[busa]

if the 4 years is max then i've just paid an extra £200 because of the claim?.....

 

i'm sure insurance companys make it up as they go along?

[richthegill]

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. after 4 years they generally (NOT ALL!) say you have the full (70%) no claims bonus

[Darkangelsdelite]

Most major insurers have 5 years as their maximum, not 4. Besides, you'd usually lose 2 years NCD for making a claim unless it was protected so not quite sure whats happened there. which company is it btw?

[richthegill]

ok ok the company i work for is 4 years!!! I was told today it's the same for others. As we all know it varies from place to place anyway!

[busa]

the company i was with was kwickfit using norwich union (the ones that paid out n the cliam againts me)and i now with churchhill using ....hmmmm cant remember at the moment...i'll have to have a look in the morning.....

 

i dont preend to know a great deal about insurance, i think i'm like a lot of people out there.......good cheap quote with the right cover...!!