Anyone got experience of lengthy car repairs?

[Tim S]

Hi everyone – hope all well. Anyone on here got experience of car repairs (non-Lotus) taking ages?? A minicab crashed into our Corolla last March. It took the repair place till December to source the parts, but it’s still not back with us – though they’re saying they might have it finished next week. Even if the repairs are good, it will have sat outside unused for over a year, so I’m worried about brakes, tyres, the interior, hybrid battery and more being wrecked and us having an enormous bill to put them right. I’ve been trying for months to get the insurers to write our car off, but they won’t.
Would be good to know what our position is about whether we’ve grounds to reject the car when we’re told it’s ready.
Have you got knowledge/experience of similar?? It’d be good to get some advice.
Thanks
Tim

[campbell]

Rotten luck Tim.

No experience of this. Thankfully

However in the spirit of shared problem-solving… is this via “insurance co recommended repairer”?

If so, there may be T’s & C’s that give a clue to how long you’d be expected to wait for a completed repair or demand a write-off settlement etc?

Also what “trading standards” might be laid down around this? Insurance Ombudsman worth a prod? They will expect you to have raised a complaint with insurer first I imagine.

Another shortcut - wee call to Craig Moncrieff. He has had a role in some insurance repairs I’d expect. Or will know someone who has more inside track.

Fingers crossed for a new car anyway

[Tim S]

Thanks Campbell. Useful thoughts. Yes, it's all through the insurer's repairer. Definitions seem to be around whether the delay is 'reasonable'. To me it isn't. The insurer disagrees!

I think I'll take it to the ombudsman. Just not sure whether I should reject the car if they say it's ready, or take it and argue later...

Cheers

[MLCELICES2!]

No experience either sorry.

Can you go see the car before you take it home or it's delivered to you so you can check out the interior etc? Will the garage be putting it through its MOT prior to returning or do you need to do that. I know the MOT will only pick up basic stuff. What about getting an AA vehicle inspection done as well before taking it back.

If it all looks ok then you're nearly there getting your car back and you have some peace of mind.

I'm going through a section 75 claim to do with my car I bought from a dealer and its pain I really can't be bothered with.

Hope it all works out.

[Dark]

Is the other insurer paying for a hire car through all of this?

Usually that's enough in itself for then to write the car off and avoid the hire fees.

I agree you definitely want the car inspected by AA/RAC/etc before collecting and handing back any hire car.

[Tim S]

Thanks guys - a good shout re getting an independent inspection.

I think that our insurers are currently paying, pending them fighting it out with the others about who was at fault. But they're already >1 year of hire car - at about £75/day according to the papers we see. So that's nearly £30k before any repair costs - all for a £18k Corolla

[robin]

Have you tried reporting it as stolen?

If there is a direct issue with the repair (e.g. the bumper that they fitted is the wrong one or cracked or whatever) then you can reject the repair.

I believe that any other damage done to the car is a new claim, not a rejection of the original repair (grey area if the new damage and old damage overlap I would think).

If Toyota have a recommended procedure for maintaining the hybrid battery whilst the car is not being driven, for example, and the repairer hasn't followed that, then you could argue they were negligent and start a new claim against them to get it repaired. I bet Toyota don't have such a procedure, though. As for the rest of it, your car could easily be parked on the street its whole life, so I don't think you will have a claim for the degradation to the bodywork/brakes/etc., assuming they have cleaned the car and test driven it. That type of damage will all be seen as wear and tear I bet - it's not something you're insured for, whether it happens outside your house or their workshop.

There probably are some grey areas - e.g. if your car had needed some new suspension component and the ABS warning light is now lit - you could probably argue that the garage broke some sensor/wire whilst fitting the new suspension.

Your best hope is that there are new dings in the bodywork - these clearly shouldn't happen when the car is with the repairer (and yet are almost inevitable if they've left the car for a year in a pound with other cars being moved around).

I think you will be on the hook for the wear and tear in the end, come what may. Your best bet is to clean up the disks and sell the car privately I think - then it becomes SEP.

[j2 lot]

I had an Elan in for repair in the 90s after being rear ended. Typically rear lights were on back order and it was months before I got it back -within weeks the alternator had seized. Insurer wasn’t interested as it wasn’t anything to do with the repair they paid for and Lotus said it was wear and tear and they couldn’t assist.
I know it was a long time ago but I doubt anyone will be willing to pay out and you will be left to pick up any ‘lack of use’ costs.

[Tim S]

Thanks guys.

The repairers have now stopped giving us any kind of updates, so it all gets weirder.

A complaint to the insurance ombudsman has been made...not that I can imagine it will help much...

[campbell]

Lawyer up.

Someone has dropped the ball here, big time, and you don’t deserve to carry the can.

How many more cliches can we squeeze in here

Hang in there.

[JohnStewart]

Don't expect a quick response from the Ombudsman, as I've recently finished a case with them.

My car was hit by another car in the rear whilst I was stationary. It too was stationary but rear ended by a van who didn't notice the traffic has stopped on a wet road...

The damage to my car didn't look too bad (I drove it home), but after a month the insurance company decided to write it off as uneconomical to repair as the overall costs were more than 50% of the cars trade value. Even though I wasn't at fault, my insurance company paid out "market value" for my car, which transpired to be what I could have got for it selling it in a cash sale to a dealer. They ignored condition and lots of factory fitted options as "These don't impact value after 12 months". I disputed their valuation, and they eventually offered a few hundred more, but said if I disgreed with this I could go to the ombudsman, which I did. Looking around at the time it was going to cost me about £4k to £6k on top to buy a similar spec car of the same age, none of which were local.

It took the ombudsman 7 months to gather all emails and correspendance (which I provided them with on day 1), and do their own investigations which turned out to be no more than a paid for Parkers valuation, done 5 months after the accident by which time car prices had dropped considerably. They ignored all my autotrader advert screenshots taken at the time, saying that the spec/model number wasn't exactly the same, and they had lower milage than mine so didn't count. No allowance/calculations based on milage differences taken into account - just reject the advert as possible evidence of their payout being too low.

Lesson learned - market value when getting paid by insurance, even if you aren't at fault, means the value you could get by selling the car at trade price to a dealer in a cash sale, and not what it would cost you to buy the same car in a retail sale or even privately. The insurance ombudsman is financed by the car insurance companies, so may not be 100% impartial. Agreed value is likely the best option.

I've now got 5 years of increased premiums as I've been involved in an accident to look forward to as well....

[Tim S]

Hi John. Thanks for the info/warning. We really are being screwed over here.

I fear your experience with the ombudsman is to be repeated for me - they've taken nearly 6 weeks between me submitting my case and them sending a standard email to say they're investigating...

[JohnStewart]

Hi Tim,

if my experience is anything to go by, it took about 3 months before they really started doing anything, and I even had a few phone calls with the lady. I was then asked twice to provide separate peices of information/documentaion that I had already provided on the initial submission. They also have an annoying habit of sending replies using a secure portal that you have to log into. Be aware if using it, to copy/paste the text you are typing into word or notepad as you go along, since if you leave it more than 10 minutes before pressing send then you will be logged out and lose everything and have to start again.

[campbell]

FFS

This is extremely valuable intell, albeit very demoralising