Hi all. I rear ended another car last night. My mechanic suggests I should claim as the insurance company will probably write off my 13 year old car. The other car didn't actually receive much damage and the owner at the time hoped we could avoid the claims process. So my question (almost certainly, a stupid one). Can one party opt to not inform the insurance company when the other party has?
Arthur
In news: snipped-for-privacy@s80g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
51 wittered on forthwith;If you rear ended someone then it's pretty much your fault in the eyes of the insewerance.
The way around this is to pay for the damage to the other car yourself, and buy yourself something else to drive. 13 yr old cars tend to be cheap, I drive a couple of 17 yr old ones...
"Pete M" wrote in message news:eo0a3n$m9e$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org...
I loved my Renault 5. Great little car it was. My Renault Laguna on the other hand.....................
No. Insurance companies talk to each other. As I found when insuring the Mini for my daughter - my wife had a bump in my car a year ago. Even though I've had no accidents in 20+ years, it still added £50 to the premium because it was my policy :-(
Question: why does the OP want to avoid claiming? Sounds dodgy, if someone rearended me I'd be straight onto the insurance, as even the tiniest bump can do untold damage to modern cars that you can't see until you get the bumper off - in my wife's incident above it (apparently, but that's insurance for you) caused £1500 damage to the back of a ZX estate, while the only visible damage to the Omega was a broken bumper clip that I fixed with a self-tapper!
Anyway, that may be fortunate for you. Go with Pete M's suggestion.
Hmm :) Just before Xmas I was sitting in my Fiesta at the side of the road waiting for someone when *BUMPH* - someone had reversed out of his drive opposite me and hit the rear bumper right on the driver side corner. There doesn't seem to be much damage so until now I've let him off but I've got all his details. The only perceptible damage is that the bumper now moves up and down a fraction when you press on it. Left side is still fine.
Do people think it's worth taking it to an accident repair place to get it looked at? What I don't want is to unnecessarily make a claim against him for something very minor. However I suspect that until I made myself known he was planning to just drive off!
Cheers,
Peter.
What you "should" do, and what is often a good common sense idea are often two different things.
If anyone, it's you that should ideally be worrying about whether or not you should tell your insurance company as it was your fault and it's you whose premium will be hiked, not the other guy. As far as the other party not telling their insurance company, then I can't see it being an issue - I was rear-ended several years ago and just dealt directly with the at-fault party's insurance company - got rear-ended on a Saturday, had a cheque (write-off value of a whopping £250) arrive on the doorstep 9 days later on the Monday.
As for whether or not you should claim (which isn't really what you're asking, but a question worth asking) - all depends how old you are, what your excess is, what car it is (and hence how much it's worth), what level (if any) of protected/guaranteed no-claims bonus you've got - i.e. basically how much it's likely to cost you at renewal time (and for the next few years) as a result of claiming. They'll put the base premium up by a small amount due to a claim no matter what (though if you're fairly old + hence low risk this could be a *very* small amount), but whether or not your NCB is affected is quite an important one. 13 years old is something like an L reg, so if it's only a fairly average L reg car that's only worth £500 tops, you've got to think carefully whether it's worth claiming or not....
I'd get it checked out. Modern cars have crumple zones behind the bumpers, and it doesn't take much to knock the whole lot out of alignment.
No.
It will be in the terms of your policy that you must inform the insurance company if you are involved in an accident, that does not mean that you must claim from the policy however.
If the non fault party does not want to inform the insurance, I would be very suspicious that they don't actually have an insurance policy.
Thanks for your advice. It was someone els's rear end that got clumped by me and they have claimed and I have too. As expected the 416 is a write off even though it only needed a new bonnet and head lamps. A shame as it was 13 years old but had only 35k on the clock. But not a shame as it was auto and cost a rocket in gas.
As we say, 'Bye bye you nice little trollop.'
:)
Arthur
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