As per the title. Left a note, but the owner has not contacted yet. Her excess is £350. It'd probably be worth paying directly to get it fixed if the cost was £500 given NCB etc. That's is even if the owner would consider it.
Wife's car is very old so will be not looking for a repair it
What chance given the photo below (3 to 4 year old Audi) the damage is up to £500 or thereabouts?
I would say no chance - audi body shop will want 1500 for that and as a 3 year old car they will want it to go back to Audi. You might be lucky but I would be very surprised.
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I had to replace a Ford Focus bumper, the cheapest place (small back street edge of town type place) i paid £400 for a non Ford part & fitting. If you have to replace a real Audi part its gonna be alot more than £500..
As per others - more so if leased - zero chance of £500 for a good repair. Put it through the insurance.....
You may get lucky and they don’t contact or like when my Mrs did similar the owner rang up and said “don’t worry about it, company car and they’re making me work my notice period so I don’t care” bought a lottery ticket that day lol
Is your NCB not protected? I had a prang a few years ago and was surprised that my insurance renewal went down by ~10% the following year at renewal. I called up to check they had captured the right details, and was told that they basically expect every driver to have an incident at some point...
Insurance can be random
I'd say, even at trade money, that'll be £6-700 for a job that won't look like it was done by a Labrador.
Maybe it depends where you are but my Mrs pranged the rear bumper on our new TT a couple of weeks ago, luckily there's a local bodyshop near us with a very good reputation. Bumper was split along the length for about 2 foot,I was absolutely gutted because the bumper is bloody huge. Fella said he could sort it no problem but I was very sceptical when he quoted £300, he kept the car 3 days and I can't tell it's been repaired. Gave it a wash and a wax this weekend and can't spot a thing, very impressed and I'm really picky with my cars
I might be wrong but I always thought the excess was only for repairs to your own car, not damage caused to others. I'd go through the insurance if that was me.
You may yet be surprised. The wife bumped a parked car in Asda and went in looking for the owner. They agreed we could sort it out without insurance because they were just happy that the wife didn’t drive off. His car was fixed for £72 and mine was done for £150
Thanks for this, and everyone else for the comments.
I thought that the voluntary excess applied to the third party’s costs, so that’s some better news.
My wife has 9 years NCB (unprotected), so assume it’ll be back to something like 3 years NCB next year. She only drives insurance group 1s or 2s, so hopefully not a massive impact on renewal.
The wife’s car is much more badly scraped, so given we’ll now claim for the third party, I thought it might be worth getting the damage fixed on the wife’s car.
I put my wife’s reg through WBAC and it came with a price of £150! So not worth paying the excess!
I believe there is a duty to report any vehicle collision (that causes damage) to the police.
It's most likely that there'll be a condition of your insurance policy that you report any collision with a third party to the insurer, irrespective of whether you are intending to make a claim or not.
R
Last edited by ralphy; 17th October 2017 at 21:52. Reason: clarity
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
I was hit by another driver just a few metres from my house. I said to the driver to park up and we can then sort the details. He said ok. But then changed his mind and drove off. Insurance company then held me responsible as I did not have registration number of the other car. I had protected no claims but had to pay excess and increased insurance this year. The damage was £2500 which I was surprised at.
I had very similar on my Audi A6 (in fact the damage on yours is worse than mine) and it cost £2,435 so no chance whatsoever at £500.
That would be seen as normal wear and tear around here.
A few years ago, I decided it might be worth having a protected NCB, so having had a rather expensive prang, I figured I would still be fine, but no.
What Directline did was still give me my NCB but doubled the premium the discount came off, so effectively they kept to their word but it cost me dear! Took 4 years of a reducing loading on my premiums to get back to a regular premium.
Even if you weren't to claim from your insurance, and pay for the repair yourself, you're supposed to declare any accident, so you may as well let them sort it anyway.....
Protected NCB is highly overrated IMO
I've heard of that from other people I know that have NCB. Yes the no claims is protected but the premium jumps up the next year to compensate. It's one of the reasons why I've never bother with NCB.
To the OP you say the excess is £350. Is that voluntary plus compulsory excess added together? I was looking at insurance quotes last year and I was surprised at just how high the compulsory excess was. My advice is do it as claim and face the fact it's going to cost you perhaps a grand in excess and increased premiums :-(
I think the OP is better off biting the bullet on this and letting the insurance settle it.
Several years ago, when my wife's Fiesta was less than 1 yr old, she hit a stray dog and cracked the front plastic bumper....... dog ran off but the bumper was badly damaged. Rather than claim on the insurance I decided it would be cheaper to fix it myself. I did this but in the end the cost of the bumper plus broken mountings cost slightly more than the excess on the policy. No idea whether the premium would've gone up the following year, but protected NCD doesn't seem to be what it purports to be from what I hear. In my case it was just about worthwhile doing the job myself and paying for parts but in the OP's case I'm sure it'll be far more expensive.
Paul
I don't think that's correct. As I see it, the law requires the exchange of details (minimum of name, address, registration plate number) between both drivers so just putting a note on one car may not stand up if subsequently challenged.
Maybe the OP fulfilled the minimum requirement of their details (we don't know that) but even so I think it would be unwise to not report the matter to the police.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
I would go down the insurance route. Sorry, but what is it about women hitting cars trying to park? Liz had only had her Aygo less than a month and someone trying to park next to her took a swipe similar to the OP and scraped one of her doors. Luckily the women owned up to Liz and offered to pay for the damage but after Liz rang me I said no, it had to go against her insurance.
Same thing happened in a supermarket car park but didn't stop and it cost us. I'm fixing a dashcam now to her car.and asking her to be more spatially aware of where she parks... very annoying.
Need to be very careful. Suspect the question all insurers ask is "have you had an accident?", not "have you made a claim?". I got screwed by my insurer when I disclosed that the local bus compay paid out for damage a passing bus did when I was stationary at lights. My premium went up!
Going off at a slight tangent, as you do, I did some 'Trade Plating' a few years ago while I was skiving sick from the public sector.
I was shocked to find how many new cars are bashed and crashed then returned to sale as pre-reg or ex-demo. There was a repair facility at Didcot which turned some proper messes into minters. Journalists were the worst for knackering test cars.
Just hope they don't get greedy!
Someone I know had his car (quite an old Audi A4 cabriolet) reversed into by a Sainsbury's delivery van. He had some legal cover or other and a third party seemed to deal with the hire car he was given while his car was being repaired. I was there when they delivered it to him, brand new Audi S4! Apparently it was the "closest thing to his 3.0 cabriolet!" More like the most money they could milk off Sainsbury's insurers!
His car was repaired (was only a door scrape) but the body shop left cod eyes in the paint so (quite rightly) he didn't except the car. It took weeks and the bill for Sainsbury's was astronomical.
The guy that dropped the S4 down said at the time how much the daily charge would be and with the repair it was an eye watering amount.
That interesting Harry - didn't realise that sort of thing went on. Not surprising really though.
The problem is you still get an "accident" against your name! My wife was bumped from behind with no damage to our car at all so she was happy not to record anything. The other woman insisted so we had to tell our insurance company and it now registers that we had an accident. What is not clear is if it affects the premium or not.
I suspect you've more chance of plaiting fog than getting that repaired for anywhere near £500, but you might be lucky with a little independent repairer. Don't hold your breath as they say!
Personally I'd wait and see what happens. The other car may have been illegal. No insurance, banned driver or whatever.
Keep us informed.
Unfortunately, yes.. they are THE reason why insurance costs have sky rocketed in the UK.
A whole industry that exists solely to claim as much money as possible from the insurance companies, encouraging non injured passengers, drivers etc that they did have an injury and creating the the credit hire, credit repair, physio and private medical companies.
Most people don't realise just how they are "used" by these companies as a product to generate revenue. How your details are bought and sold with "referral fees" of up to £1,000 per claimant (yep that means 5 people in your car claiming ? thats £5,000 paid as a referral fee).