Fraudulent claim on my partner's car insurance

[Goldlady]

Hi, over two years ago I had an extremely MINOR scrape in the back lane doing approx 5mph, the sort that most reasonable people would disregard. I had four people in my car and no-one even felt my car scrape the other party's bumper. However he made a song and dance and started harassing my to put it through the insurance because his wife wanted a courtesy car. I told him not to be so stupid - his car wasn't worth more than £50 - however the harassment got worse, I was plagued with phone calls from people wanting me to authorise a courtesy car and people banging on the door, so I took advice and rang my partner's insurance company, stating that I did not want to claim but I was sick of the hassle. They told me they would speak to him. I heard nothing more until two weeks ago we received a snotty letter from our insurers saying we had failed to disclose a claim. I rang them to discover that they had paid out £7500 for whiplash injuries etc etc.

 

We didn't received any notification at all that this claim had been made and I need to know how I can sort this situation out. There is no way on this earth he suffered a whiplash injury but the insurers say if they have a doctor's note to that effect they have to pay out.

[unclebulgaria67]

All Insurances advise you to contact them if you have an accident or incident, where there is a possibility of third party liability. The danger if you don't, is that your Insurers could try to make you pay for the claim later or decide they don't want to Insure you any more.

 

Not much you can do, apart from apologise and explain the situation.

[Goldlady]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I didn't make clear what my problem is. I am not concerned about the insurers accusing us of withholding information, I am more concerned about the fact that someone has been able to make a claim on my partner's policy without his knowledge and whether the insurers should have notified us that this claim had been made and given us an opportunity to fight it. What I now want is for them to remove this ridiculous claim from our records as it was fraudulent and made without our knowledge and I believe that the insurance company have not followed the correct procedure.

 

My view is that if they decided to pay out £7.5k on a fraudulent claim that is their problem and should not be ours!

 

Thanks

[unclebulgaria67]

The Insurers can do as they wish, as they are the ones holding the risk. Insurance policies are written basically saying that the Insurers will decide on matters of liability. They should have contacted your partner to advise them that a claim had been made, but there is not any rule that requires them to do so.

 

Annoying, but not much you can do about it. Unless you want to pay the Insurers the £7500 and then look to take on the third party yourselves. Are you prepared to start issuing court proceedings against the third party and have you taken legal advice on how do this ? Have you seen evidence of their injuries and how will you prove the injuries were bogus ? I think you catch my drift.