Whilst driving my car in slow moving traffic, my husband was hit up the rear (on the corner) by an ambulance on a call. My insurers have deemed my car uneconomical to repair and offered me a settlement figure.
Should I scrap the car or buy it back and fix it myself? I?ve been offered £2,500 minus excess of £200 and savage charge £375. Ideally I want to buy it back but what if I fix it then find there is further structural damage? Would a bent chassis show up in an MOT? I?m thinking of getting it MOT?ed to check. Should it pass and I tell my insurers will they accept this and allow it to be reinsured without having the work done?
I?m concerned that the £1,900 I have left won?t be enough to fix it properly. We got a copy of the report by the engineer who looked at the car for my insurers and he said it would cost me £2,900 so I would be £1,000 out of pocket if I went with them. Should I challenge the insurers and ask for a better settlement figure or just shop around?
Will I have difficulties insuring it in the future? Would it attract higher insurance premiums because it has been written off? Will I have problems selling it?
Finally my insurers agreed the ambulance was at fault so why do I have to pursue the claim on my policy? The ambulance driver told my husband he didn?t have personal insurance so my husband would have to claim on ours. But since talking to the Citizens Advice they don?t agree with that statement and told me the following taken from a legal website.
?As a general rule, the driver of a vehicle which runs into the back of another vehicle will be held liable for the accident.? ?Emergency vehicles have no special exemption from liability for accidents that they are involved in or cause. The same rules apply as with any other accident.?
My insurers couldn?t give me a straight answer on this and I got fed up being passed from departments etc. Help
|
Was it a health authority vehicle? If so the driver will be covered under their own policy. I would think your insuraers will be claiming from them (is your policy Comprehensive?). it seems unusual to deduct a policy excess in a case like this so I would dig a bit deeper.
Ambulance in just a vehicle and any driver must be insured, whether it was on an 'emergency' call makes no difference.
|
The Ambulance trust may not have insurance, but have a bond which they place with the correct authority. They are still insured, but they process and pay all their own claims in that case.
I'd claim direct from them, off their insurance. Apart from notification, it's got nothing to do with your ins. co. in legal terms.
I'd get it all together on paper and claim direct from the ambulance operator.
|
Why not contact one of the legal specialists - such as helphire ?
If you were hit from behind they are highly likely to take up your case.
You would get a hire vehicle - at the other party's cost - until yours is fully resolved, either as a write-off with an acceptable value, or repaired to your satisfaction. There should be no cost to you whatsoever - all though you will still have to admit the claim for a few years on all renewals.
How they are insured is not your problem.
|
|
I agree, don't involve your insurer, they will simply try to make as much money from you and the third party as possible.
|
Personally the driver might not have insurance - if he did for a car it would not cover a commercial vehicle.
Just claim off the Health Board / Ambulance Service - they may have Comp Insurance or they may be 3rd Party Only - however as you are the 3rd Party you are covered.
99% of rear end shunts it is the man at the back to blame -The AS will have a fleet manager - get on to him - if he / she is co-operative matters can be resolved quickly. If the P1$$ About put the matter with a claims manager - threaten him with a claims manager - that will waken the him/her up as these "hire boys" make their money by inflating all costs - Hire cars £500 / week etc and only .
Until all the details are settled they keep up the pressure and the bills just rise - this brings insurance companies into line as they can drag things out and make people take 2nd best..
|
I must say that someone recently ran into the back of our car and I simply claimed on my insurance and left them to sort it out - isn't that why you have insurance?
The other parties insurer did call us but they wouldn't speak to me anyway as I wasn't driving (even though it's my car and my insurance - so I told them to 'go away'.
|
A former customer of mine had an accident - run up the back, drunk driver - police were actually following the drunk driver.
He had 3 days in hospital, 3 weeks off work and only 3rd party insurance. The insurance company offered hime under £1,000 for the car, £500 for his injuries after being 4 weeks in hospital/off work and no car. He is financially poorly off and needed a car to get to work / take kids to nursery etc - he accepted £1700 in teh end.
If he had gone to a claims manager they would have given him a hire car, pursued for a better settlement of the car and personal injuries. At £500 / week for a hire car the bill would rise forcing a better settlement for the innocent driver.
I am not really a fan of calims managers but when you are in a corber and being starved into submission by an insurance company you need all the help you can get.
|
Regarding what to do about buying the car back - I would generally advise you not to, with one proviso.
If the car is rare, classic, or for any reason much loved - in other words if it is basically irreplaceable, then yes, buy it back and fix it. If it is just a common or garden car of whatever sort, do not.
After a prang of the scale needed to write it off, the chances are that the car will never be quite the same again, even if it does seem that everything possible is fixed. If you can just take the insurance money and go out and buy an un-crashed equivalent, why bother?
|
There are rules about re-licencing insurance w/offs. I do not recall them.. but you should check before action.
If you plan to sell the car in the next 2-3 years it will be worthless - as written off.. or virtually so.. so you will be stuck with it..
Plenty of other fish
madf
|
|
It would not be written off in the sense that it would need re-licencing,you are confusing this with cars that have been sent to the scrapyard as a write off.If resurrected re-licencing would be required. In this case they just mean beyond econimic repair,with the rates charged by repairers a bad scrape will write an older car off.I had a 3.5 SD1 written off due to a minor bump to a rear corner.I got the insurance payout and bought the car back for £50 as it was easily repairable.
|
|
AFAIK there should be a reference on the engineers report saying what classification the write off would be, if it says "C" - does that not mean that all that is required for the car to be roadworthy again is an MOT? "A" & "B" are more serious.
In any event you don't have to use your insurers for the claim and if you went and paid for the car to be repaired and then claimed off the ambulance trust for the cost of repairs (so long as the cost of repairs does not exceed the value of the vehicle) the car would not be classed as written off anyway, because you had it repaired, and the money grabbing insurers didn't get a look in.....i.e. it was not classed by them as a write off.
I suggest if you are driving around in this vehicle that you take it to a back street body shop repairers they will tell you the cost of repairing it, I bet it will be vastly below £2,900 !!! Don't worry about the chassis bent, the repairer will have a good idea from looking at it if that is the case, and they will be able to straighten it if it is bent.
You can add to your claim for "loss of value" say a couple of hundred quid because by needing a major repair the cars value may be affected. So your claim would be
£900 repair costs
£400 loss of value
I don't know anything about the above comments on hire cars at £500 per week ??? you have to mitigate your losses, if a new car costs £2,500 you cannot sit back and hire a car £500 per week for 3 - 4 weeks whilst the claim is being sorted, you have to either repair or replace your car at the earliest opportunity.
|
Classes A and B will never be back on the road. Money can be made on C,D, F and X's but only if you are doing the work yourself or have an impoverished bodyshop in your favour or if it is really something special. As garages are rarely able to finance "recorded" cars, they wont take them as a trade-in, private buyers who do an HPi check will run a mile. By all means fix it cheap and run it yourself, but be prepared to keep it for a very long time.
On another tack, all of my insurances explicitly exclude loss of value as a claimable item.
|
|
|
|
