My Fiesta was stolen when toerags broke intpo my house and stole the keys. ( see www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=21323 for details)
I have had a cheque from the ins. co. but I\'ve not cashed it as I\'m disputing the amount, the letter saying so is signed but is sitting on my office desk. Just had a call from the cops to say the car has been recovered, apparently with no damage. Who is the legal owner of the car right now?
I don\'t want it back, providing I can get the proper settlement as I was about to sell it anyway.
Your opinions please?
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Most likely your insurance contract will say exactly what happens in circumstances like this, but I would expect that
a. The insurance company, in paying out, has made an offer to purchase the right to the car should it be recovered, at £x.
b. You have neither rejected nor accepted this, therefore the offer is open.
c. You are entitled to accept it, unless and this is likely to be the case the insurance contract you have already signed says that such offer will lapse if the car is recovered before the cheque has been cashed.
d. If you inform the insurance company, they will be entitled to withdraw their offer, and hence your right to cash the cheque and effectively sell them the car. They are unlikely to get as much for the car as they will have written the cheque out for, so will probably do so.
e. If you can accept the cheque, it is likely that the matter will be closed. But the "if you can accept" part is a very big if.
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Thanks David.
Just had a thought. According to the cops there is little damage as they stole keys. If this is the case (and I find out on Tues), then it might pay me to take the car back and cancel the claim as this will cancel my no claims bonus and cost me.
If I can do this, is it the case that I have not made a claim when I'm next asked by an insurer?
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Until such time as agreement is met, then you are the legal owner. You are also required to behave reasonably and take reasonable steps to minimise your losses. Although you own the car, the insurer does have the right to take any reasonable steps they choose to minimise their own loss.
So, for a start it needs to be in a storage place which is economic. If its in a place costing £200 per week and you could have moved it to a place that is £100 then you should do so.
Although, as I mentione dabove, the insurer may choose to move it themselves although they are not bound to do so.
As to whether or not you are behaving reasonably in incurring the costs in the first place, that is slightly different. If your insurance company subsequently increase the offer, then it would be taken that you were justified. If you eventually accept theirs, then its open to interpretation. If you went to court and had to accept less (unlikely I know) then you would be stuck with the storage charges. The argument being that you were not acting reasonably.
At any point until you accept the offer/cheque, you continue to own the car. You can cancel the claim, but bear in mind that storage and recovery charges (if any) will all becomes yours at the same time that the car does.
If the car has no damage then you will have difficulty in refusing the car back. And even if it is damaged and they choose to repair it, then you again have no choice and will get the car back.
This may lead you to conclude that if the car is undamaged or repairable, then your discussion about increasing their total loss offer is not likely to be productive !
Also, if you are not intending to accept their offer, a letter saying so but sitting in your drawer is not "minimising your losses" so be careful.
Depending on the amount in dispute, if you really don't want the car back, then think carefully about their offer.
Do you need mroe info ?
M.
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Thank you for your reply. The car has been moved by the police to an approved garage where it will be finger printed on Tuesday.
If I understand you corectly the car is still my property, even though a cheque has been sent but not yet cashed. So if I take the car back and of course return the cheque, in the eyes of the insurance industry has a claim been made such that it would affect my NCB? To add extra complications to this one, the car's cover ran out a couple of weeks ago, so in order to move it I'd have to take out new cover!
This is starting to sound like an insurance examination question!
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Mark, out of interest, could you clarify a point.
You have stated that if Nsar accepts the car back and withdraws his claim then any storage/recovery charges also become his with the vehicle and I understand the logic of that, that the costs are incurred by the vehicle and transfer with the ownership.
Now my question is:- our local police now charge for the recovery and storage of any stolen vehicles, even, I understand, charging storage while the vehicle is undergoing forensic tests. They then bill the owner and have stated in the press that they expect the owner to pass this bill on to their insurer as it is a cost incurred by the theft.
The owner obviously has the following options, swallow the cost and not claim, claim and lose his NCB. Now if the owner claims and the cost is more than the market value would the insurers have the option to declare a total loss?, who would pick up the difference?
I understand that some of the police charges run into several hundred pounds so this would not be just an academic scenario with a 'banger'.
Could be interesting.
Cockle
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Cockle,
I;m not clear, do you mean if the recovery charge was more than the value of the vehicle ?
Firstly, understand that when an insurance company "writes-off" a car, it does mean a little more than beyond economical repair. Whilst that is clearly part of it, that would only mean that they would call the car BER when the repair costs were >101% of the car's value.
However, they also believe that anymore than nn% (70% ish in the past) is bad news. Their point being that any car would be pushing to remain reliable and acceptable to the owner with that level of repairs, and with an older one it would be almost impossible.
They run into things like - we need to replace this wing, but whilst the existing wing is in perfect nick aside from the accident damage, all the bits it bolts to are rusted away.
Also, insurance companies assess the "repair"ness of a car independent of any other parts of the claim. If you took your argument to its fullest, then you would write-off a brand new artic because it hit a car and the injury claim was higher than the value of the truck.
Also, the insurance company would still have to foot the bill to the poilce, irrespective of what they did with the car.
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Sorry Mark, should have explained myself clearer.
I think you've answered me with your last paragraph.
But for the sake of clarity, what I was trying to say was that if the car was worth only £200 would the insurers really pay out £400 plus to return a £200 vehicle or would the insured have to make up the shortfall? From what you say it would appear that the insurers would have to settle the police costs in full whatever.
A thought I had was that it might fall foul of betterment in that by making the claim you could actually be deemed to be better off than the total sum insured although not materially but financially by not having to fund the recovery charge.
Cockle
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No, what Mark said basically. If you were the kind of person given to leaving your car with the police for storage anyway, there might be an argument for betterment, but in practice insurers will pick up all the costs associated with a claim, less any excess, unless they consider that they weren't necessarily incurred as a result of the claim.
If for example you were told you could pick the car up on Monday, and didn't collect until Friday, then the insurance company would at least look for a reasonable excuse before paying the four days' storage - and might refuse to do so altogether.
(Frequently you can get a £1k personal injury claim with £4k of legal costs tacked on, so it has a lot of real world application).
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Thanks, Mark and DavidHM, things are a lot clearer now. All the techy stuff with insurance has always confused me a little so thanks for the explanation.
Cockle
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I've decided to make the claim after speaking to Tesco (who couldn't have been more helpful) they pointed out that recovering the car had already cost £170+vat plus 5x£12/day storage, plus cost of new locks, plus cost of minor repairs to known damage taken together was more than the damage to my NCB, never mind the cost of any hidden damage in the 4 weeks it's been gone.
They invited me to send print outs from Auto Trader of similar cars at £400 more than they have offered me so any movement in that direction and I am gaining.
Thanks for your replies
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