Insurance advice - next steps?

Hades

Hades

Hades

Man of Honour
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
30,051
Location
Surrey
In October a car hit my parked car in a car park. I was not in my car at the time but I have a witness and reported the issue to the police. Using AskMID I contacted the other persons insurance and started a claim. I also advised my own insurance company that I was doing this but stated I was not claiming from my own insurance.

The other insurer has been progressing the claim albeit slowly. The other party is denying he did it. I called today for a further update and their insurance company is stating they will only deal with my insurance company and not me, despite previously dealing with me.

I do not want to progress through my insurance because the repair cost is "only" £500 and most if this will be taken by my excess if my claim is not successful and it will result in a fault claim against me.

I am looking for advice on my next steps. I do not have the drivers name or address so I am unable to start small claims court proceedings at this time. Is my only option to involve my insurance company or can I start proceedings against the insurer?
 
A quick update to this... After advising the other party's insurance that if they refused to talk to me then I had no choice but to put the matter into the hands of an accident management company or alternatively consider small claims action against their policyholder (both of which would increase the costs of the claim) they decided to start talking to me again. After a few more weeks they further decided to settle the claim and have agreed to pay for repairs.

I am under no illusions that this will result in higher premiums due to having a non-fault accident on my record for a few years but it became a bit of a principle to keep fighting it. As I'm an old git the increased premiums over a few years are likely to be less than the cost of repairs anyway.

So to the other driver, who's insurance I hope has gone up by more than mine... STICK THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT !


So far my accident fighting history is:

Me vs cyclist 1:0 (took her to court and she settled days before)
Me vs hit and run 1:0


:)


EDIT: Thanks for the suggestion matthab.
 
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Good work, sounds like you went about it in the best way possible for everyone involved.
 
Thanks. For the benefit of others the police were unable to proceed with a prosecution due to the fact my witness was not prepared to go to court. But they were prepared to provide me with the drivers details should I have needed it (so I genuinely could have taken him to a small claims court and almost certainly would have - I had a signed witness statement and other circumstantial evidence by this point).

This wasn't a smooth road and I had to be fairly assertive throughout. So if anyone is thinking of pursuing directly with the other party's insurance then only do so if you are prepared to stand up for yourself and not give in at the first obstacle. It is simpler to go via your own insurance company and let them fight it if you're not. I would use the same approach in future however.
 
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