Insurance question (bit long)

You have a legal duty to minimise your losses - if you can prove through quotations that repairing you other car was cheaper that hiring one, then ISTM you might have a case.

There is no reason why you should not claim for injury, providing you suffered injury, of course. See your doctor.

You seem to have gone about the whole process in the wrong way.... Firstly you get your car professionally assessed, they would then write the car off as uneconomical to repair (Cat D) Secondly you get as much money out of them as you can for your car. Thirdly you then offer to buy back the salvage for £50... Fourthly you then use some of this money to fix the car and buy beer. Fifthly you claim for the brand new PC that was in the boot they also damaged beyond repair.. and the whiplash you received.

All going well, you should end up about £3000 better off at least.

PS:- I am kidding.... I do not condone insurance fraud.

I once bought a V6 Volvo estate for £800, a year later my wife drove it into a wall, she has protected no claims. The insurance company wrote it off and gave me £1600 for it :) and the next door neighbour £1100 for there wall :) - They where not upset as they where going to knock it down anyway. I then bought back the salvage rights to the car for £50 and replaced the broken indicator for £15 and kept it another 3 years without any problems. This is by far the cheapest car I have ever owned.

Andy

As far as I understand it you have right to claim for any reasonable consequential loss. Whether you have an agreement with your insurance company to claim that for you is something else.

Make sure you have legal cover to recover uninsured loss ?

You have a duty to minimise the loss to *your* insurance company and no other. The fact that you have done so for the 3rd party is coeurtesy on your part.

You have the right for *all* consequential losses - I've included paracetamol and bus fares before (OK I was being arsey since the 3rd party was in return) and they had to pay. Since the emergencey repairs to your vehicle have saved them money that they would have been forced to pay anyway they cannot really argue. If they are writing your vehicle off as an economic loss then they also cannot argue betterment either.

However.

Can you replace your vehicle with a similar one in a reasonable time? If not then I'd insist that they repair it - you are entitled to be placed back in the *same* postion as you were before the crash and a pile of notes does not a car equal if you cannot get another. You can always argue that one with them and see how far you get.

Similar thing happened to me a few years back - somebody rear ended my car. It was several months later before their insurance company had got the repair finished but they refused to pay me any compensation for loss of use in the intervening time as I "had the use of a motorcycle" - despite my protests that a motorcycle was a severe limitation which I shouldn't have had to endure.

General rule is don't try to do them any favours, don't admit you can do without your vehicle for any length of time and make sure you bill them for everything that you've had to pay for as a result of their client's mistake...

Darren

Yes it is right.

I also thought the hire car had to match your own car, so if you had a sports car they couldnt just give you a people carrier.

It's a bit rough on you, but I don't reckon that they'll capitulate on this (even though you have saved them money here).

I think the problem here is one of the age-old insurance principle of indemnity. What this means is that the insurers will restore you to a position that you were in before the accident occurred - no better, no worse. (lets forget new-for-old insurance here, it breaks this principle and is another discussion altogether).

So bizzarely, they would have covered the cost of a hire car & repair of yours (unless it was written off due to economic reason...) because you're no worse off than before and no better off - you have your car back & no loss of use of a car whilst it was repaired. Your other car was unroadworthy so couldn't be used instead.

They won't cover the cost of putting the other car on the road because you're better of than before - ie your other car has been restored to a roadworthy condition.

It might be possible that if you'd approached them before doing anything then they might have agreed to this course of action as it was the cheapest way to give you use of a car whilst yours was being repaired, but I don't think you've got any chance after the event.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I might approach the 3rd party insurers directly and see if they have an ounce of decency in them, but I won't be surprised if they knock me back.

As a few people have rightly said, I suppose I should have agreed my idea with them first - it's unlikely that they'll pay up anything if they don't have to now.

Chalk it up to experience I suppose.

Thanks everyone for your time and ideas.