Insurance claim advice please...

L

lacroupade

Veteran
Not me, my daughter!

I present this partly for advice from anyone in the insurance business, but also as a salutory lesson...

While visiting her soldier fiancee in hospital in Birmingham (airlifted back from Canada with pneumonia) my daughters car was t-boned (with two small kids in the back) by some little creep who jumped a red light. He hit her so hard, her car (a 58 plate Vectra) was totalled.

She quickly received a letter from an Asian solicitor, naming an Asian loss adjuster for their Asian client, saying they would be suing for all costs.

My daughter has a witness who was driving behind her (who presented themselves at the time to her and the police), whose written statement I have seen, stating that my daughter moved off on a green light and that they even saw the other driver speed up in an attempt to beat the lights. Cut and dried you'd think? No...

The other driver, after three weeks delay, magically produced a witness - a mate of his apparently - who was even driving immediately behind him. This witness never presented themselves to the police or my daughter and was not mentioned in the initial threatening correspondence.

Currently the insurer (not sure who it is), was on the brink of coming down on the side of the other party (they even said to my daughter at one point that they believed she had driven off on a red light, having clearly not read the winess statement), but has now decided it will be a 50/50 claim, saying that they don't want to go to court as they might lose. She stands to lose an £800 excess AND her small no-claims a a result.

So can anyone inside the business advise me what the best courtse of action is? Can we press them to review the matter or is there an insurance ombudsman I can utilise? Not only do I want justice for my daughter, but this little creep deserves to be taken to the cleaners for his crass stupidity. :headbang:
 
crass stupidity

I think you are being kind, driving recklessly sounds more accurate.

I don't know where you go next, sorry. I hope someone here can advise you and with a bit of luck a spell in prison is in the offing for the other driver.

Piston heads has a policing forum, they have quite a few coppers as members, you could try a post on there and see what comes back.
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/forum.asp?h=0&f=10&mid=0

Good luck with it.
 
I think I would avoid mentioning the asian-ness of the driver and witness. It sounds like you are expecting less honesty from a particular cultural subset, although I can see the connection it might not play well.
 
Shocking , am sorry I cannot offer any direct advice lacroupade
. But it would seem there trying their luck! , I would pursue this personally as much on cost but for sheer principle. Am sure some good quality advice will come along shortly.... it’s a ridiculous statement they are making short of there being a fault with the lights its frankly absurd , best of luck your win this am sure :thumbsup:

Why not make themselves present at the scene its insurance fraud and a criminal offence, fact :x
 
+1 - don't let them play the racism card! If the police are involved is there an investigation going on? In my experience any crash like that the cops investigate and look to press charges for Careless/Dangerous driving. The other driver may well know this so is even keener to avoid 100% blame. Was there any CCTV in the area, and would it possible to 'encourage' the police to investigate an act of insurance fraud? A letter from your solicitors regarding the latter sent even as a bluff to the other party might make them sh!t themselves and back down?

Pissed me off that you pay insurance money but time and time again the companies do not act in their clients own interest. They do whatever is cheapest and risk-free for them with the added benefit that as a 50/50 fault they can then bump up your daughter's premiums next year.
 
cj_eds said:
+1 - don't let them play the racism card! If the police are involved is there an investigation going on? In my experience any crash like that the cops investigate and look to press charges for Careless/Dangerous driving. The other driver may well know this so is even keener to avoid 100% blame. Was there any CCTV in the area, and would it possible to 'encourage' the police to investigate an act of insurance fraud? A letter from your solicitors regarding the latter sent even as a bluff to the other party might make them sh!t themselves and back down?

Pissed me off that you pay insurance money but time and time again the companies do not act in their clients own interest. They do whatever is cheapest and risk-free for them with the added benefit that as a 50/50 fault they can then bump up your daughter's premiums next year.
Click to expand...


Just for clarity, no racist card intended....it was more the 'cliquey' aspect that peed me off, almost as if it were a conspiracy.

The letter sounds a good idea though, thanks!

Sadly no CCTV and it was just local bobbies that attended, not a traffic unit, otherwise I suspect he would have been screwed.

And thanks Finisterre for the PH link....I'll try something. :thumbsup:
 
HI Lacroupade,

An employee of ours had a similar situation, basically as follows, daughter pulls up at a junction behind a taxi, taxi reverses into her, (lone female), then exactly as your daughters case, contact from solicitor stating she is at fault. Her father obviously decides to take the case on as such, as we all would probably do, witnesses turn up from nowhere, 1 even stating he was in the vehicle at the time! this case went on for months and months and months, to the stage where barristers were involved. He had at least 5 days off to attend meetings, (as well as it went to court, the taxi firm folded (starting up again, same place, same taxi's etc, you know the score), witnesses were no longer available (left the country ?) he ended up not out of pocket for costs but if you add up his personal time on the case filling in forms, his time off work etc he's thinking now, was it really worth it with all the stress, complete nightmare.

These ar*eholes need to be sorted but unfortunately its a long haul job, solicitor is an obvious direction but may be worth checking this out to start the ball rolling, not sure if its a "scam" as such but worth getting them involved.

http://www.insurancefraudbureau.org/
 
Its absolutely no help to you at all right now ..... but its the reason I bought a "road hawk" ......
Camera front and back, speed, time date and shock force.
Its designed for cases just like this.

best of luck - happened to a friend of mine and it ended up a 50/50 claim as the insurance companies decided they were not going to fight it.
 
I work as a liability expert for a very large insurance company, I don't have time right now but I'll take a Propper look at this threads later :-)
 
Do you have legal cover? This may even be from home insurance as they take these sort of things on (even employment disputes).
 
teamemmenracing said:
but its the reason I bought a "road hawk" ......
Click to expand...

For a long time I've been surprised something like that didn't exist. The answer was that it did exist and I hadn't found it! Do you declare it to the insurance co, and do they make any acknowledgement for it? Surely you're less likely to do something stupid if you know you're being recorded!
 
That is madness and a summed up statement of the type of people this great country now houses! I hope it works out for your daughter in the end!
 
Reading your daughter's story - did immediately remind me of these ...

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2011/december/21/cash_crash_scam.aspx

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23995694-greedy-lawyers-blamed-as-cash-for-crash-scams-boom.do

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-14938191
 
I was just thinking ...............
why dont you mail them and tell them to Google Road Hawk.

You are not claiming anything, but if they get the idea it was on camera, they must just change their story rather than be proved to be liars in court ...... if you follow what I mean. :D
 
Lacroupade, that story is infuriating. Unable to offer any knowledgeable advice ( though wish I could as bastards need a comeuppance), but seems to be some reasonable suggestions, esp. pushing for investigation of insurance fraud.

Have you googled the all the named persons and companies in the correspondence. They maybe fictitious, he may not have insurance, might be coming on strong to intimidate your daughter into settling up.

Either way lone female, car with children, w***er jumps the lights and hits her, there has to be a way of convincing the police to take seriously. It wouldn't do their PR any good.

Any solicitors on here can advise?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom