To think this is so unjust and unfair??

[PootLovato]

Finished for Christmas yesterday, collected car from staff and customer car park - it was dark and I got in from the rear so didn’t notice the damage.

Got home and neighbour was parking and asked ‘when I did that?’ and pointed out the front of my bumper and wing which was very badly damaged.

Someone has obviously driven into my car in the car park and just driven off, no note and no details left. Police can’t investigate further as no council CCTV in area, work have advised ‘park at own risk’ so can’t help either.

Hopefully it won’t cost the earth to fix but what kind of arsehole does that?? They’re going to get away with it too. Very fucking annoying!!!!

Thanks for your stories and kind words!

Clearly there are a lot of arsehole drivers out there.

Good shout on the company note kezsha, thank you!

And yes, to put it into perspective, it is ‘just’ a car but I don’t know what kind of person can just drive off and leave it. Twat of the highest order!!

Sorry about you car but you need to get this in perspective. Its just a car at the end of the day.

Oh F*ck Off!! What a pointless & trite thing to say.

*Lethaldrizzle

Sorry about you car but you need to get this in perspective. Its just a car at the end of the day.*

It's not just the car, though. It's the £200 that is coming out of my holiday money, meaning I can't have a few of the treats I wanted, the awkward conversation I had to have with the man parked next to me who thought I was accusing him while I sat there upset in the car park. It's the afternoon of annual leave I had to take to get a quote, and the meeting I was late to because I had to phone the insurance company.

(I wasn't accusing him, he looked very anxious though so I suspect his day was spoiled too.)

Why the hell should I have to waste all the time and money because of someone's careless driving? They should have left me a note for I would only have had to call the insurance and they would have fixed everything up for me.

I witnessed a fairly new car hit in our village. A group of youngster came tearing up the hill and round the bend, straight into it, caused considerable damage, laughed their socks off and left. I got their number and description of car and left a note for the owner of the car. He duly contacted me (turned out I knew him) and eventually it went to Court and I was called as a witness. Which was fine.. the driver got a big fine and a ban. BUT.. it turned out he was a member of 'that certain community who tend to live in vans' and he and his family weren't best pleased with a witness. I spent a scary few years until they all moved elsewhere.

Some kids rammed a supermarket trolley into the side of my brand new car during the school holidays. They just left the trolley embedded in the side of my car. I saw them do it but was too far away to do anything about it. Just wanton destruction.
Three lads aged around 10 and 12. I expect some of their parents must have been around, I don't know why else they would be hanging around Asda. Cameras weren't working. To just destroy someone else's property on purpose - I despair. It cost over a grand to fix.

Years ago I bought a brand new car. While it was parked on my own driveway some knob in a van (damage too high up to be a car) smashed in the back and drove off.

I assume that whoever it was had been in the habit of using my drive to turn for a while, and must have been connected with one of my immediate neighbours because no-one else would need to turn there, but because my new car was bigger than the previous one had misjudged the distance.

We were about to go on holiday so as well as costing a fortune it caused issues with timing. Neighbours denied all knowledge of course.

Last year I had a terrible problem with parking (I blame the menopause, because I'm OK now) and managed twice to hit another car in a car park. In both cases I left a note with my details. Both rang me and were really grateful, saying they'd been hit before and people had just driven off. Unfortunately being honest does backfire and I was refused insurance at the next renewal. I wonder if that's why so many just drive off.

A Tesco van driver scraped down the side of my new to me car last year.

I witnessed it, but because he drove off and denied it, Tesco would do nothing.

Bastard!!!

Can I add another totally unjust and unfair outcome, and shame Reading Borough Council across Mumsnet in the process please?

The Council had a worker using a strimmer on a patch of grass outside my elderly mother's flat. The strimmer picked up some stones which smashed against my mother's parked car, smashing her window. She is not a wealthy woman to put it mildly, and the damage was costly and meant she could not use her car. To claim on insurance would take time and affect her payments the following year.

The contractor immediately admitted what he had done, apologised and assured her the Council would, of course, compensate her for the damage caused.

They refused. I contacted them and protested. They were horribly rude and were a brick wall.They said had no liability to pay for the damage they caused.

My mother was so traumatised by it, and the basic lack of decency, she got rid of the car and never drove again.

I cannot begin to describe how disgusted I am with Reading Borough Council for doing this. At every possible level, decent behaviour would mean you pay the measly amount for damage you cause another's property.

How can we as a society bring up our youngsters to have respect for others and behave well when Councils like Reading behave like this?

Was talking to a chap just yesterday who had the same thing. Two panels scraped up and no recourse. Some people are just plain irresponsible.

I reported it to the police and gave them the reg number but after a few weeks I was informed that they "couldn't do anything about it"
Have had the same, apparently its fine to damage property to the tune of hundreds of pounds and just leave. Our local police wouldn't even accept a report of damage, I would have had to go personally (no phoning or emailing allowed), on a week day, to a town 15 miles away...almost as if they'd rather not be bothered with dealing with it at all.

• I wonder if the police also can't do anything when its one of their cars, or if thats somehow different ?

Flowerpot, don't know how long ago this was, but if you have anything in writing from the contractors admitting they did it, you could take the council to small claims court? V easy to do online, I know it wouldn't windvthe click back, but might make you and your DM feel a bit better?

God, these stories! How do some people sleep at night?

XmasInTintagel A few years ago I'm afraid. The contractor even wrote a letter apologising and admitting it was his fault, and he sent it to us and the council. She didn't want to take it to court, she was too upset for me to even do it all.

Reading Borough Council is a disgrace.

My dh had his new car 3 weeks when someone scratched all down the side of it, had to get 3 panels repaired. He was so disappointed that someone could do that and get away with it and not try to put it right.

Yanbu.

Like Flood said upthread, mistakes do happen, with something like a car however you accept responsibility.

I guess there's a reason why the phrase hit and run exists.

Can imagine you'd be pissed off OP that they weren't decent.

I witnessed an ancient lady do this yesterday in Sidmouth (may as well try to out her). I yelled at her to stop as she was trying to reverse into a space too quickly. She belted the car behind then eventually parked. I shouted at her that she had hit the car behind and she shouted back "no I haven't". My dad was a few metres in front, looks quite distinguished and said "actually you did, I saw it". Because he is in his 80s, she believed him. She claimed she'd leave a note, but I am not sure that she did.

I walked on down the road and some moron decided to have a go at me for verbally abusing an old lady!! So in the opinion of the twat in the Repton Hockey jacket yesterday, it's fine to wallop someone's car and deny all knowledge, but not to pull someone up for their atrocious driving.

I have informed the local police force and photographed both cars. I would love to contact the victim but other than there being only superficial damage, I don't know how to do it. In the meantime, ancient visually impaired old bat gets to drive her Honda round causing chaos.... OP you have my sympathy. The perpetrator may be as unaware as the old bat was yesterday.

I have a dash cam that activates and records when the car receives any slight knock. It also takes short clips when parked at 30 second intervals. I'm going to be buying one for the rear as well because if anything happens at least it possible I might get it on camera!

I once parked at the back of an empty carpark due to needing space to get in and out of my car. I have cameras built into my car and my car clearly states it. A large van pulled up next to my car and opened his car door with such force it damaged the side of my car. The driver tried to deny it but it was caught on my cameras. I still don't understand why he felt the need to park next to me making it tight for himself when there were so many empty spaces.

A woman I work with has form for this! She told me once how she badly scraped someones car whilst reversing, but didnt leave a note with her details as it was a windy day and the note would have blown away!

That's just one incident..

Have you asked the police if anybody has said anything? I bumped into someone's car before and left a scrape of about 3cm. I didn't stay because newborn DC was screaming, I didn't have pen/paper etc and no way of knowing who the car belonged to.

I checked online and it said to tell the police so that if the person gets in contact with them they can match up the details so that's what I did. It is unlikely as the policewoman I spoke to seemed totally shocked someone would report themselves but it's possible? I still feel horribly guilty about it as they never contacted me so I guess the person either never asked the police, or never noticed the tiny scrape amongst all the dents on their car as it was a bit of a wreck.

A few years back I was sitting in our car parked, and a taxi driver swung into the car park beside. I could see he was too close and going to hit me, so hit the horn repeatedly. He paused, looked at me, and pushed forward - taking out the bumper and wing. He then had the audacity to claim it was nothing to do with him. Dash cam to the rescue.... and the police were of no use.

The most annoying thing was I’d only gotten the car back the previous day after being rear ended.

OH is an auto body repairer, but it still costs money to repair, plus the inconvenience and I have to listen to him bitch about it for months on end.... it’s very quiet though about when he reversed into a bollard. He just quietly installed parking sensors and told his work colleagues I needed them

On the flip side, I hit and badly damaged a car in a leisure centre car park. I left a very apologetic note with my details on the car, and also left my contact details and a description of the car with reception staff. I contacted my insurers and gave description of the car I'd hit and the reg no.

I never ever heard from the poor person who's car I'd hit.

Why would this be?? I felt awful!

Yeah, I’ve logged it with the police who called me back this morning to advise they’d be closing the log unless I can provide a registration number.

No CCTV so shit out of luck :(

This happened to me at Sainsbury's. The guys who do the car wash in the car park were kind enough to take the bad driver's registration number and give it to me when I came back with my shopping. I don't think I would necessarily even have noticed the damage straight away as it wasn't on the driver's side. I was really really grateful to them! They also offered to be witnesses. The whole thing is still dragging on but at least I have a reg number, witnesses and CCTV.