Make A Successful Car Insurance Claim

Here are some tips on making car insurance claims, including what extras you can claim, such as £10 per day for loss of use of your car.

When you have an accident that's not your fault, the other party's insurer will pay for repairs to your vehicle. (If you have comprehensive car insurance, it may be that your insurer repairs your vehicle first and sends the bill to the other party.)

You want to ensure you keep all evidence, not just of the `crime' scene, but of your losses. You also should be aware of everything you can claim back, because it's not just the cost of the repairs. Here are a load of tips.

At the scene

Take photos at the scene if possible. If you have any costs moving your vehicle after the incident or getting transport home, get receipts and keep them. You can try to claim these back later.

Call your insurer as soon as possible to report the accident. You really should do this within 24 hours.

Remember, you can claim a number of other things, not just repairs to the vehicle:

What can you claim?

Don't get anything fixed until your insurer or the other party's has approved repairs. Otherwise, they will likely not pay.

Are you entitled to a courtesy car? If not, you need to consider how you'll get around. If the other party's insurer admits liability quickly, it'll probably offer you a car. Is the car good enough for your needs? If you need a fancier car than they're prepared to offer, e.g. for work, then you can hire a car and the other insurer should pay you back. If you don't need a car, you could take a bus or occasional taxito go about your normal life.

If you're not offered a car by the other insurer that's at the standard you need, and if you don't hire a car, you can make a legitimate claim for loss of use. You should ask for around £10 per day, and you shouldn't accept a figure much less than this. You can claim it from when you can't drive your car (e.g. your car is in for repairs) until 24 hours after your car has been repaired. If your car is written off you should claim loss of use for every day you're without your car, until four or five days after you've received your settlement cheque (i.e. a reasonable amount of time for you to buy a new car).

The other driver's insurer should reimburse any policy excess you've paid, if your insurer paid for the repairs in the first instance.

You can claim from the other party's insurer miscellaneous expenses such as for letters and phone calls. You don't normally need evidence for it, so it's not unusual for claims of £35 to be accepted and paid. Remember, you don't get if you don't ask. I would still keep evidence of such costs, if I was serious about wanting to reclaim them. You are entitled to them.

You rarely win anything for inconvenience, and you're not likely to get anything substantial for stress without medical evidence. However, you could always add £10 to your claim for stress and inconvenience (if you feel you have been stressed and inconvenienced by the accident). Sometimes the other insurers will just pay it.

If you lose earnings through lost days work due to inadequate transport you need to get as much evidence as you can. Insurers and their lawyers typically scrutinise loss of earnings claims vigorously. If you're self-employed you might need to send them three to six months' accounts, showing that you were too busy to rearrange work and therefore made a genuine loss over that time. Keep your records organised.

You can claim medical bills for injuries. Furthermore, you can often claim compensation, particularly for nasty or lingering injuries. If you can't go about your life or job properly, you should be adequately compensated for that, too.

Beware your duty

You have a duty, as the innocent party, to mitigate (minimise) your losses. You have to be able to show that you needed to incur any costs that you did to go about your normal life. You can't claim the taxi fare for a ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh, for example. You can't hire a car that's more expensive than you really and truly need.

Also, if the other party's insurer has offered you a suitable vehicle, you can't then get a hire car. However, if you accept a hire car before the other party's insurer offers you one then you should be fine to keep the hire car.

You also can't claim loss of use forever. If it takes a long time to get your car repaired, or to receive a settlement cheque when your car is written off, you probably can't claim loss of use for six months. This is the same regardless of whether your insurer was doing the repairs, or whether it was the other insurer. Often you might be expected to find alternatives, such as to buy a cheap car if that would have been less costly than claiming loss of use for many months.

If hiring a car: get out of it quickly once your car is repaired, or once you have a cheque if your car was written off. By `quickly', I mean within 24 hours if your car was repaired and within a few days if your car was written off. The sooner you give it up, the less likely the other insurer will dispute your claim.

...Which leads me nicely onto Part Two - How To Ensure Your Car Insurance Claim Is Successful.

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