Rant warning!!

Last October my stepson (19) had a minor bump in slow moving traffic on a motorway. Despite the young lady giving him dogs abuse at the side of the road he remained calm and acted properly and politely. He even called her when he got home to make sure she was ok and apologised again and offered to pay for the damage to be fixed asap if it was possible to avoid the hassle of insurance companies.

The damage to the other car was practically zero. There was a small dent to a plastic bumper that hadn't even broken the paint. He estimates at impact he was doing no more than 5-10mph. I believe him as there was very little damage to his car either.

Now this pond scum of a woman has claimed for personal injury!! Despite us writing to the insurance company advising this was impossible due to the impact speed they have proceeded to just pay out £3k without as far as we can tell without even requesting a hospital or specialist opinion. And as far as we can tell we don't have any right of appeal.

Firstly what a lowlife that would fraudulently claim this and secondly how messed up is our insurance industry that just payout to these tossers? Now his insurance is due for renewal his quotes are astronomecal and he's struggling to afford it as a 2nd year apprentice and he's properly down about it all as yes he knows he's made a mistake but acted as well as he possibly could and has been royally shafted. All I can hope is karma comes around and bites the bitch royally on her arse.

Rant over!!

Way of the world i'm afraid - best to move on a forget I have found. I had someone drive into the back of me whilst I was stationery waiting at a set of lights, was a taxi and the guy got out apologized about it, swap details etc. 3 days later I had a letter of his insurance saying I was at fault as I jumped the lights and reversed back into him!!

Luckily I had a front+rear dash cam fitted and submitted the letter and video to the police. They weren't bothered but his insurance company soon backed down and paid for my damage. I even had his "accident management company" on the phone threatening me aswell.

I would advise you get a cheap dash cam and just treat everyone on the road as a numpty! At least you can prove facts if anyone tries it on again.

Shaun

quote:

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Originally posted by prawnabie
3 days later I had a letter of his insurance saying I was at fault as I jumped the lights and reversed back into him!!

Luckily I had a front+rear dash cam fitted and submitted the letter and video to the police. They weren't bothered but his insurance company soon backed down and paid for my damage. I even had his "accident management company" on the phone threatening me aswell.

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Yes the way things are now, litigation society.

Your lad was too nice, you should never admit liability / fault at an accident, leave it to the insurance companies, that way she would have had to prove injury and what it had cost her, and that it was your lads fault.

Chalk it up to bitter experience, he will be a much more careful & better driver for it, you may even look back in the future and see it as a cheap lesson, considering some of the accidents which happen.

Way of the world, and not always the doing of those involved. Had a delivery driver reverse into the front of my stationary car. An apology from him, friendly chat (these things happen) exchange of details he went on his way.

Firstly MY insurance decided I was at fault as it was the front of my car that had come into contact with the back of his van.
Then his insurance decided the same.

It would have been so easy for the other driver to go along with this especially as he was a contract driver so could have been "let go" for having a fault accident but give him his due he stuck to his story that he was at fault and had reversed into my car.

So the car all sorted and then the calls start from the personal injury lot, everything from had I made a claim to the suggestion that there was already a £3,500 cheque with my name on it just waiting to be sent out. None of them asked any questions like "was I injured?". The whole set up suggested that I was entitled to £3k or whatever just for being the non fault driver. Its no wonder people just say yes, who doesn't want £3k + to spend.

Finally - genuine question, I know they always ask but does the size of the claim make much difference to the renewal, I know you loose the same amount of NCB but do they load the top line quote? I know a colleague got caught out by this with protected NCB. She paid out to protect her NCB, made a claim following the car being stolen and recovered, next year her premium more than doubles. When she phone the insurance company, yes she still had 50% NCB but the top line was more than doubled. A quick shop around bought it back down to about what it would have been without the protected NCB.

I just guess its heads they win, tails you loose.

Yes unfortunately the amount of the claim has a direct bearing on his premium. We had been estimating a £1k max repair cost. Since its been settled at £4.5k Inc costs the quotes have jumped another 250 quid.

Considering his premium last year was 700 quid, he's now looking at double. I can see the insurance companies viewpoint as he's a bigger risk it's a bigger premium. Just grates as I suspect my body shop guy I use it would have been a couple of hundred quid for a top job to fix.

This happened to my son a few years ago 5mph bump at a junction cracked my sons front no plate light damage crack to the rear bumper on there nearly new c max lady driver late fiftys and daughter in here late twenties seemed ok at the time then a claim goes in for both of them for whiplash and back injuries claim came to 12k and the car repair was £600 insurance company where not interested to pursue for fraudent claim and paid them my sons insurance went up by 40 percent happens all the time still even though the government have put in measures to stop this happening .too many tosses out there

A couple of years ago I was a passenger in a mates car crawling through London traffic.
He nudged a car at no more than 5 mph causing the smallest of marks on a bumper. Fella (only occupant) got out and asked for insurance details incase there was any hidden damage.
Sometime later my pal was advised that both passengers in the car had sustained whiplash.
The insurance company said it was cheaper to pay out than try to prove there where no passengers present.

What a sad state of affairs.

My dad had someone do that to him, he hit a car with one person in it but the claim listed four passengers. Fortunately his insurance company took an interest when he reported this and followed it up (There were independent witnesses) and he told me at that point the fault was also changed by the insurance company away from my dad as they suspected it was a scam.

I thought they were meant to be cracking down on this but there still seems to be a lot of it about and also you shouldn't get any compensation unless an injury causes you to miss work, lose money or have to drastically change your life style and the money should be valued to this event as such to warrant £3000 you should be off work for two months or have some sort of treatment not available on the NHS with receiptable costs.

As aside note you need to be careful about admitting liability and offering to pay for repairs yourself as you may find that invalidates your insurance and if the people are real bastards they may take you money then report the accident and you'll end up in all kinds of hot water.

On the radio the other day (Jemery Vine, BBC2) there was a whole section on it. The worst case was a very early morning bus that averages 3-5 passengers. One morning it had 27 passengers on it. The bus had a minor coming together with a car. No injuries at the time. Something like 24 of the passengers and the bus driver claimed whiplash. Fraud investigators found out that all of the 'claiming' passengers and the bus driver AND the car driver were relatives!

About a year ago bloke ran into the back of me at a junction. Totally his fault, he totally admitted it. No damage to my car, his bumper was off. He said he'd rather not involve the insurance. I said okay, we shook hands and parted company. Never heard anything. Thats how it should be done.

Last year some daft biddy bumped the rear door of my car while trying to reverse out of a parking space. All sorted out with the insurers, and got the damage paid for without penalty.

Over the past 12 months I must have had 10 calls from ambulance chasers telling me that I should claim compensation for personal injury - I was sitting in the *parked* car at the time. The only "injury" was annoyance caused by the daft bat and her claim of "there's no damage".

My wife had exactly the same last year. She tolled into someone in stop start motorway traffic. No damage, and the chap at the time said not to worry. Just before departing je asked for het contact details just in case. A week later we get a call from the insurance company saying they we processing an injury claim. We explained this was tripe, and my wife had our baby in the cat and the speed was so low, we were not even contemplating replacing het car seat. The insurers said they thought it was bogus, but had no proof so had to pay out. We were so angry! Scumbags!

I am currently dealing at the other end.

A guy run into my wife causing minor damage. Him being quite young and seemingly honest my wife agreed to settle out of insurance.

We opened up conversation and had since gone cold. Not answering phone calls or text.

I am currently considering using a V888 DVLA form to find his address.

Like I said be careful with that, if you leave it too long before reporting it to your insurer you could end up not being able to sort it without going through small claims court (Which if its a young guy is probably a waste of time as he probably hasn't got any money). If you have his name and registration contact your insurance company and thy will be able to sort it out, and tell them he refused to give his insurance info (Unless he did) and that he tried to talk you out of claiming, and they'll sort it out.

Unless the damage is really minor then chalk it to experience.

i keep getting a company calling me about an accident where a cars handbrake failed and run down a hill into my parked van, no occupants in either vehicle, they call and say i am entitled to an injury claim. the whole insurance system is a scam just renewed my daughters insurance this week quoted on monday at £314 phoned on thursday to pay and its changed to £481 told them to shove it and got dogs abuse

As per some of the other accounts above I would put a lot of the blame on the insurance companies and 'no win no fee' type solicitors.

I had a woman clip my door mirror which knocked it off, I was happy to settle for cash but she wanted to go through the insurance, they offered me to collect my car, give me a courtesy car and drop it off/collect etc etc. In the end I persuaded them to just send me a cheque for a new mirror and we agreed on £50 for me to fit it (£180 in all)

I also had many calls from various companies for months on end saying records indicated me being in an accident and did I want to claim for personal injury. They were worse than bloody double glazing people to get off the phone.

How annoying all these claims must be to you lot

Really needs sorting out this sort of fraudulent claims.

Surely it's not hard for the insurance companies to get pics/evidence of the damage/impact speeds and tell the claimants to bleep off?

It seems to me as the insurance industry is just lazy. It's easier to post a cheque rather than investigate. The claims handler basically admitted this. Until the insurers change their attitude and toughen up nothing will change. The bloody Americans and their litigation culture has a lot to answer for!!

I have however just ordered 2 dash cams. One for me and one for the lad. I want evidence next time!!

I recently got rear ended in Grimsby (ha!) at a roundabout. We stopped and the lady seemed very quick to say that every looks fine, and wanted to head off. I took her details just in case. There was a layer of grime on the bumper from doing lots of motorway miles that day. I took it to the local garage and I needed £240 worth of paint touch up. I phoned up the lady and she was apologetic and agreed to pay the garage for the work.

I did get it all on dashcam though. I didn't mention this and I didn't need to use the footage, but having it as a backup takes a lot of stress away.

tl;dr: dash cams ftw

Just noticed a dent in my daughters car, in the near side door and shut line with the front wing. Its her first car and I've spent the last couple of months trying not to think too much about her being out on the open roads on her own for the first time.

However, the dent was caused whilst she was parked up somewhere and not with the car - its a classic someone misjudging the gap whilst pulling in or out of the adjacent space injury. As is the common theme on this thread, no one has taken responsibility for it and presumably they just drove off.

Its not worth paying to get it repaired as its only a basic spec 2010 Ford KA, but its annoying as its her pride and joy and I spent time finding one with A1 bodywork when I bought it. I'll get around to trying to improve it myself when the weather gets better, but it will be a PITA as the door will have to come to bits to get to the back of the dent. I'm also a rubbish panel beater.

She's just done a tweet to see if she can try to shame someone at school into admitting it, as the school car park is the most likely place as its full of new drivers.

Couple of years back, leaving my street on a motorbike turning left, noticed a dynorod van parked as the paint is so bright I did a double take and missed by seconds witnessing an accident 25 yards to my left where an elderly driver in a hire drive car crossed a junction and hit a car who had the right of way. Blameworthy car was half over the junction when I stopped around 30 feet from its rear bumper , then on come the reverse lights. I held the horn on constant and put full beam on to no avail, didn't have time to get out of the way or off the bike ( it's big and heavy ) hire car hits me gently , didn't even knock me off, spoke to the driver then after calming down told him I was ok, the bike was ok shook his hand said I'd take it no further. Couldn't act as a witness as I genuinely didn't see the accident and gave a statement to attending police to same end. Since then I've been issued solicitors papers demanding I give a witness statement against the old chap, I replied stating the above. Ends with an upset ambulance chasing solicitor, then another letter, and another and another, dropped into the solicitors office and told them off. Pencil pusher at a desk then attempts provocation saying he can't believe I didn't put a claim in, no point in talking to him, just said I'm not after stupid claims for no real reason, desk operative then says ' if you won't claim though us I'll pass your details onto the claims database then you'll see! I couldn't believe he said it, told them to stop pestering me. I've had at least 2 calls every week from the ' we've been told you've been in an accident claims companies' ever since. Unrelenting nuisance calls, even when the affected people repeatedly state they have no interest in dishonesty the flaming lawyers stir up the claim/blame society. And we all get to pay for it through insurance premiums. I will never again agree to leave matters out of my insurance company, I still wouldn't claim but hopefully they'd keep the claim vultures away from me. Sorry to hear about your lads situation, to many greedy people out there now, think that dash cams are the way forward for decent people with nothing to hide.

I got whacked by a taxi whilst virtually stationary, he hit my front end and claimed i had run into him by changing lanes,

insurance decided it was my fault and the claim was going through until the cheeky sod put in a personal injury claim and £36,000 worth of car hire

Last i heard insurance were taking him to court to contest the car hire charges. I still lost my full no claims and my insurance doubled the next year. It makes dash cams an appealing idea.

I was stationary, awaiting to pull out of a station carpark and a knob reversed into me bending the door and rear panel, I should have claimed personal injury then!

It went through happily as he fessed up, and I got payed out on the car only

It was SWMBO,s car, we got hammered on insurance the next year for making a claim, because it was her car she was slammed, because I was driving I was slammed and the extra cost over a couple of years would have paid to have just had it fixed ourselves

Nowadays even if you claim on your house insurance it loads your car, the world has gone mad

There is some balance, I had a scrap Astra estate jam its brakes on halfway across a junction which was a contrived accident, I grizzled to Aviva and they contested, refused to pay and took them to court.... End result is still everyone's insurance going up of course.

Anyway, if you think they are having you over complain and complain, to do nothing just encourages this as people will screw yiu as its cheaper to pay out than fight.

[Edited on 23/1/16 by mark chandler]