Motor insurance claim against my son. Need advice.

[beetlejuice01]

My son was involved in a car accident whilst driving a courtesy car. 

 

My son was having his own vehicle repaired. The same company that was doing the repair offered him a courtesy car whilst his own car was being repaired. My son had agreed to buy the courtesy car from the company when his own vehicle had been repaired and sold. 

 

The courtesy car was insured under the companies own trader insurance policy whilst my son was using it for the few days that it took for them to repair his own car.

 

My son collided with another vehicle due to a third party vehicle pulling out from her driveway causing my son to swerve and he collided with an oncoming vehicle. The accident was captured on CCTV. The third party claimed that it was not her fault because she claimed both vehicles that collided, were speeding. She refused to give her name or her insurance details. She is not aware that the accident was captured on CCTV. She had left the accident scene before the CCTV footage came to light. We have pictures of her and her vehicle and we obviously know her address.

 

The CCTV clearly shows that neither vehicle was speeding and that the accident was caused be her, pulling out from her driveway.

 

At the scene of the accident. The other driver wanted my sons personal details and insurance details. My son phoned the company who supplied the courtesy car to get the insurance details. The company immediately went online and cancelled their insurance policy, so that no claim could be issued against them.

Now the other drivers insurance company is pursuing my son for the cost of the claim that they have paid out to their client.

 

My son did have insurance on his own vehicle that was under repair but that policy only covers him for his own car.

 

This is really unfair as the vehicle was insured at the time of the accident but they now refuse to become involved in any claim against them.

 

What is even more unfair is that my son has had to pay the company 6k for the vehicle but can only get back 2.5k because it was badly damaged.

 

Can anyone advise what to do here.

 

[honeybee13]

Hello and welcome to CAG, I'm sorry to hear about your problems.

 

People should be along later to advise you about this, please bear with us until they're able to get here.

 

Best, HB

[BankFodder]

please monitor this thread for a more full reply later on. However, I have to say that I'm getting a bit lost on the story, what car was being driven when when the centre of. Position of the company. I'm afraid that I'm finding it a bit of a garble.

 

maybe you could have a look at the story and the way you have told it and try telling it again maybe rather more sequentially. Also what is the value of the claim?

[beetlejuice01]

• My son was involved in a collision with a 2nd party because he was forced to swerve. A 3rd party had pulled out in front of him and this was captured on CCTV. The 3rd party refused to give their name or insurance details and left the scene of the accident.
• My son was not driving his own vehicle which was under his own personal insurance policy. This policy only covers his own personal vehicle.
• His own personal vehicle was being repaired at the time of the accident.
• The company that was repairing his own personal vehicle, supplied him with a courtesy vehicle, whilst his vehicle was being repaired. It was insured under their traders policy.
• There was an agreement in place to purchase the vehicle that was being used as a courtesy vehicle. When his own vehicle was repaired and sold.
• When my son contacted the company to notify them of the accident, whilst driving their courtesy car. They did not give him the insurance details and cancelled their own traders insurance policy.

 

As a result, my son has no insurance because

 

(1) his own personal insurance did not cover any other vehicle other than his own and did not cover the courtesy car that he was driving.

(2) The company that supplied the courtesy car cancelled the insurance policy that covered the vehicle after learning about the accident.

(3) he has no insurance policy to pursue the 3rd party that caused the accident.

The 2nd party involved in the accident has been paid out by his own insurance company. Now this same insurance company is asking my son to pay almost £2500.00, which is the sum of money that they have paid out to their client.

 

Hope this clarifies the situation.

[BankFodder]

Thank you. I haven't had an opportunity to look at it carefully – but I do understand that he was lent a car by a commercial company and that the car was insured but then mysteriously the company cancel the insurance after they became aware that there had been accident.
Is this correct?

You should send the company an SAR immediately. Do it tomorrow morning. What is the name of the company?

[BankFodder]

Have you got any of the details now of the third party? Presumably you have the registration number from the CCTV. Do you know who they are?
 

And also, why isn't your son doing this? Why has he left it to you?

[beetlejuice01]

Yes the company cancelled the insurance policy whilst my son was still at the scene of the accident. He phoned them to ask for the insurance details.

Yes we have some details of the 3rd party. We know the address and her registration number. She lives 100 yards from my home.

The 2nd party lives 50 yards from my home. The accident happened at the end of our street. So its all local. The cctv footage was given to us by another neighbour.

Dad's always help their sons when they can.

 

He has tried to contact the company who owned the courtesy car. All he gets is threats from them that if he pursues a claim against them. They will pursue him for 6k of excess on their policy.

Edited June 29, 2020 by beetlejuice01
added info

[BankFodder]

Thank you. So what is the name of the company? What are you trying to protect them.

 

I think you should start doing some quite research to discover the name of the third party.

also have you received these threats from the company in writing? if you have them please will you post them up here in scanned PDF format.

 

in terms of your son, I think you would be helping him or if you allowed him to take responsibility for this and that he started to deal with it directly. There will be letters which have to be written, legal threats which will have to be made and eventually maybe a legal claim will have to be started and it will be in his name and he will have to do it. 

 

you will learn a useful approach and also gain transferable skills. There is no downside

 

[BankFodder]

also, please can you describe the damage and tell us the value of it. Presumably you have had it professionally assessed

 

Also have you taken photographs of everything.

Have you reported her to the police? It seems to me that she left the scene of an accident without giving any details.

 

See section 170 of the road traffic act 1988

[BankFodder]

You should also approach DVLA to try and get her details. You may need to provide a copy of the CCTV.

 

https://www.gov.uk/request-information-from-dvla

[beetlejuice01]

I dont know the damage cost to the courtesy vehicle. The total claim value that the 2nd party claimed for was just under £3500.00. His excess and salvage value of his car was just over £1000. That left them asking for £2500.00.

The 2nd party claimed for personal injury. Yet he refused treatment from an ambulance that attended the scene of the accident. He said he was not injured.

[beetlejuice01]

Sorry i dont know the name of the company. Other than they are an Asian car sales and repair company.

[BankFodder]

Well it may have been a latent injury but equally it could be a try-on.

 

Have you got access to all all garage reports and medical reports etc?

 

 

[beetlejuice01]

Just now, BankFodder said:

Well it may have been a latent injury but equally it could be a try-on.

 

Have you got access to all all garage reports and medical reports etc?

 

No we have just received a bill.

 

Just now, BankFodder said:

 

 

 

[BankFodder]

Will surely if they lent you a courtesy car and you agreed to buy it from them, you must know who you're dealing with?

It's pretty extraordinary if you don't.

I think you should set about finding out.

 

You're going to have to start discovering a lot of information here.

 

it seems to me that you don't know the identity of the person who caused the accident.

 

You've received a bill without knowing anything about the damage has been caused or the quotations that might have been received or knowing whether in fact you're being cheated or whether they are trying to provide you with the cheapest quotation of several.

You don't seem to have any idea of the injury that is being claimed even though they are apparently claiming against you for this.

 

I'm afraid I'm a bit bewildered that you haven't begun researching and accumulated a complete file of evidence or information on everybody.

it seems to me that everybody else in this has got the ducks in a row and and you haven't started yet

You're going to have to do that. If you don't then you may as well give up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BankFodder]

When did all of this happen?

[beetlejuice01]

I'm not saying my son doesn't know the name of the company. Just that I don't know it at this time.

When we were contacted by the 2nd party insurers. We gave them the details of the company that loaned the courtesy car. We also gave the details of the 3rd party along with the CCTV evidence.

We believed that the 2 insurance companies would sort it out between them. That's what insurance is for. You would like to think.

Its only now that we have received this bill, that we have found out about the cancelled insurance policy and they don't seem willing to pursue the 3rd party at all.

Maybe they think my son is an easy target. He does drive an expensive Car, so maybe they think he is loaded. The fact is that he saved his money to buy his Car and he works hard and long hours.

He can't pay the bill anyway. He got made redundant from his engineering job on friday due to lack of orders at his employers. Covid-19.

It happened at the beginning of the year

 

[BankFodder]

Well the fact that your son has some vital information which you don't have and yet you're trying to conduct this discussion on his behalf has shown as very rapidly the kind of problems that arise from this.

Please get your son to engage with this forum by registering his own identity and start to give us the story.

 

In your first post you ended up asking what should you do.

 

to summarise the things that you should do from the post that I have made:

 

Contact DVLA and get the full details of the third party

carry out your own discrete research to get the full details of the third party

Get details of the injury which is being claimed for

get details of the damage to the vehicle which is being claimed for

Get the name of the company

Send the company in sar

Get your son to start engaging with this thread so that we are not talking to third parties all the time.

 

That lot for starters

 

 

 

[beetlejuice01]

My son has spoken to a solicitor today to get some advice.

Basically, they are saying because the claim is a low value. It would be better to negotiate a settlement of the claim.

[BankFodder]

This is the kind of lamentable advice I would expect from a normal solicitor. if you want to give in to this then go ahead and take that advice.

If you want to deal with it and take control and also get fully compensated for any damage that you have suffered then I suggest that you stick with this thread.

It's your choice but please don't make it too difficult for us. just because we try to help you free of charge, doesn't mean that what we do is not valuable to you. 

This is not some piece of social media

 

[beetlejuice01]

Not what he wanted to hear because he feels he is blameless and has already lost £3500.00 by having to purchase the damaged Car and reselling it at a large loss.

However, he signed an agreement to purchase the car. So he has honoured his agreement. He didn't know about the cancelled insurance prior to paying them. So they have taken him for a mug.

I don't think he will give in to pay this bill. He can't pay it anyway.

It does seem that the insurer has taken the easy option to reimburse their client and then pursue my son for the costs.

[beetlejuice01]

He will write a letter to the insurers asking for all the details you have mentioned.

He will be contacting the DVLA tomorrow to obtain the 3rd party details.

 

[unclebulgaria67]

I am pretty sure that the garage did not have any Insurance in force for the courtesy car and have made up the story of the the Insurance policy being cancelled.  If you checked with DVLA, I suspect they will confirm no Insurance was registered at the time of the accident.

 

As far as I  understand the Commercial Traders policies, they have to inform the Insurers of the car registrations they are looking to have Insured.   The policies are updated, as cars are sold and new cars bought.  

 

Your Son could go to the Police to advise them that the garage has provided a courtesy car that was not Insured.  The problem is that your Son should have checked that he was correctly Insured, before he drove the car.  So although the garage may be in hot water, so will your Son. 

 

Did the garage inform your Son the courtesy car was Insured BEFORE he drove it away ?  Or did he just assume that a garage would never provide a courtesy car with no Insurance ?

 

Why did your Son, have to buy the courtesy car ?  What legal obligation did your Son have to buy the car ?

 

Your Son has been totally stitched up here and he should have obtained advice straight away.  By taking actions which were not in his best interests, has ended him in a very difficult position.  It is now trying to dig his way out of it, which is not going to be easy.

 

[BankFodder]

We'd like to know the name of the company please

[beetlejuice01]

Yes the courtesy Car was insured. The Police attended the accident scene. A neighbour called them. The police confirmed that the vehicle was insured when they did their roadside details check. It was after that the company cancelled the cover for the vehicle. If it wasn't insured. I am sure the Police would have reported my son ,there and then. 

My son had agreed to buy the Car. The company did a deal with him that they would let him use the Car whilst his own vehicle was being repaired by them. He paid a fee to them for insurance on the vehicle until the end of the month. So it was being used as a courtesy Car initially but he had in effect agreed to buy the Car. The company had already sent off the paperwork to register the Car in my sons name even though he hadn't paid anything for it at that time.

My son intended to get his own Car repaired. Then sell the Car and pay for the new Car. They agreed a price of £6000.00.

As you can see. My son has done everything by the book. I don't normally go onto forums but i thought that it might help if we knew more on what to do.

I will find out the company name.