Insurance claim when car is sold.

David73

Hi,

My neighbours car was damaged when it was incorrectly towed away by a towing company. It was a Renault Megane coupe that sits lower to the ground than a Megane hatchback.

As can be seen on their motion detected dash camera, their car was towed away or rather dragged up on a flat bed lorry by winching a hook to either side of the front axles. While towing the car up onto the flat bed lorry, the heavy duty wire cable pushed into the bottom of the front bumper eventually cracking the lower bottom of the front bumper, while their car was being dragged up onto the sloped flat bed. The driver of the lorry can be seen in the video as well as the lorries company lorry identification code.

As this was a towing company commissioned by another company it took a while to contact the towing company. However, 3 days later they took their car to a Renault garage for an assessment and damage estimate of 950 euro.

The actual towing initially said they would reslove it but they were just delaying the process until the owner went to Gardai to get insurance details.

The owener has taken multiple pictures of the damage and the towing company before lifting the car confirmed that there was no damage to car. They have now just raised a claim with the towing company insurance.

The problem now is that they now sold their Megane coupe privately and botched the reapir of the front bumper, and this no doubt reflected the selling price.

Can they still raise a claim when they have their car sold? Even, when they have video, photos and a damage assessment/quotation for the repair.

Kristopherus

Why on earth did they sell? Did they declare all the damage that was done to it? If not, they could be facing a claim themselves.

jmreire

Normally,before an insurance company will make a decision on a claim, they will need to inspect the damage to the vehicle. So it's not looking very good for you at this stage if they can't do that.

David73

Kristopherus wrote: »

Why on earth did they sell? Did they declare all the damage that was done to it? If not, they could be facing a claim themselves.

They sold it as they urgently needed a family car, they could not wait for the claim to be processed as a coupe cannot carry their increased family.

How would they be facing a claim themselves?

David73

jmreire wrote: »

Normally,before an insurance company will make a decision on a claim, they will need to inspect the damage to the vehicle. So it's not looking very good for you at this stage if they can't do that.

Yeah, I told them that.

But it looking at the parts required it looks like none of the parts can be disputed. Looking at the damage in the pics, it needs the new front bumper as it was cracked, then that new bumper needs to be painted/primed. It then needs the lower spoiler as that was stretched by the heavy duty towing cable.

Then the labour is I think 2,5 hors which seems reasonable and the labour paint costs.


I could see how an assessor would want to assess the damage of a car needing multiple parts in say a frontal impact etc, but these parts even comparing to the damage in the pics are difficult to dispute.

jmreire

David73 wrote: »

Yeah, I told them that.

But it looking at the parts required it looks like none of the parts can be disputed. Looking at the damage in the pics, it needs the new front bumper as it was cracked, then that new bumper needs to be painted/primed. It then needs the lower spoiler as that was stretched by the heavy duty towing cable.

Then the labour is I think 2,5 hors which seems reasonable and the labour paint costs.


I could see how an assessor would want to assess the damage of a car needing multiple parts in say a frontal impact etc, but these parts even comparing to the damage in the pics are difficult to dispute.

Most insurance companies have their own assessors, but sometimes they use independent assessors. They will wait until they have a few vehicles to see in a given area, and then assess them. If the claim is large enough, they will assign an assessor to travel expressly for that claim. But be it big or small claim, nowadays,,, EVERY claim will be investigated, and if it is a claim in a moving vehicle accident, and even if you are 100% in the right, they will examine your car with a fine tooth comb. And I mean "Everything". Even though you are 100% in the right.
From your account, it seems that the driver operating the tow truck was careless....he should have known that the way he was working would damage the car.