I was involved in a minor RTA where my wing mirror clipped a rear open door of a parked car. I thought its gonna go either as my fault and at the best it could go 50/50 because of the nature of the accident and the circumstances.

So asked the third party to get the quote for the repair and she came up with about £500 quote for a tiny dent on her door frame (which i think a competent DIYER can fix in 30 minutes without any trouble). The quote even had weather strips and all sorts of parts listed when the weatherstrip is no where near the dent. So i told her where to go.

But both of us have informed our insurance companies (which i think is the right thing).

Now i am wondering in either case (fault or split liability) is there a way i can reimburse the cost to the insurance company and keep/save my NCD or is it possible to cancel the claim and settle it privately.

I am in a total cloud of confusion as i have never come across anything like this.

Please Help !!:confused:

You can do either, but I would suggest the best course of action is to let the insurer deal with it and you reimburse them. I never recommend settling privately - it leaves you open to all manner of problems.

You can't really "withdraw" the claim, as you are liable and so are your insurers. You can of course not claim for damages to your own vehicle, but the TP will be entitled to claim off your insurer irrespective of your wishes where there is liability on your part.

thank you for your response!!

so how does this reimbursement process go. I mean the third party claims for the damage off my insurer and i pay my insurer and does that protect the NCD and is it worth reimbursing my insurer ? as in would my premiums be less affected if i reimburse my insurer or is it still gonna be the same difference ?

I do not claim to be an expert on these matters but I do not see why you believe you are to blame. You obvously did not think - I know I will clip this open door.

It would appear to me that if you were driving along the road and someone either opened the door or left it open and unattended it would obviously not be secure. It could move for all sorts of reasons including car movement caused by wind or body movement with people alighting from the vehicle.

Therefore, unless you are convinced otherwise, I would let the insurers decide liability. Too many thoughtless drivers open doors in a dangerous manner and it would be interesting to know the ratio of claims blamed on the open door owner.

Pedross

If you think I have helped tip my scales

thank you pedross if i am found to be liable would reimbursing the cost make any difference to my No claims as in would it help to stop the premiums from going through the roof next year ..

Just phone and ask them CD if you have already notified them it can do no harm.

Pedross

thank you for your response!!

so how does this reimbursement process go. I mean the third party claims for the damage off my insurer and i pay my insurer and does that protect the NCD and is it worth reimbursing my insurer ? as in would my premiums be less affected if i reimburse my insurer or is it still gonna be the same difference ?

It's really a case of when the claim is finally settled, ask the insurer for the total cost. Then comes the difficult bit.

You have to balance the cost of the claim against the cost of losing NCD and the difference between the higher premiums over the next couple of years as a result. Unfortunately, premiums are only calculated a month or so in advance, so the insurer would not be able to tell you.

You could, as a rough guestimate, calculate your current premium and increase it by the appropriate amount, and do the same or next year. Not very scientific or accurate, but the best that can be done really.

A warning though. Claim costs can be prohibitively expensive for people to do this, so don't automatically assume that you will be able to pay the insurer.

Just on liability, you would not be liable if the TP opened the door in your path without giving you time to avoid. In any other case, you would be liable to some extent if not completely.