Wibu to complain about neighbours wood?

[pickledegg101]

Not that kind of wood

NC as outing

So last night super bad wind, storm Francis etc. next door neighbor is currently making some kind of out building in the garden and left some thin planks of wood on his driveway (looks like wooden cladding for the roof when it's finished)

Over night the wind made the wood fly about and this wood has damaged both mine and DHs car. We have it on CCTV

The wood has caused some pretty big scratches on DHs car and one small but still noticeable scratch on mine

Would it be unreasonable to mention this to them and see if they would contribute to the repairs? I have to live next to them for the next 5-10 years so don't want to ask if it's a CF thing to do

To add they are currently financially struggling, she has lost her job, 4 kids, his job has restricted overtime so they aren't in the best financial position however the scratches will cost DH over £600 to get out as it's an expensive car

Contribute? I'd be asking for the whole cost. They should have household insurance that will cover this. TBH, their planks should be secured safely. Imagine if they flew through a window and injured someone?

@Jaxhog

Contribute? I'd be asking for the whole cost. They should have household insurance that will cover this. TBH, their planks should be secured safely. Imagine if they flew through a window and injured someone?

That's what my train of thought was. We knew the storm was coming and they made sure to secure their bins but just left the wood on the drive loose (about 8 planks all together) he came out this morning and gathered them all up and put them back on his drive so knows they moved in the night!

Check your own house insurance to see if you're covered for this - I'm not 100% but I don't think your neighbours home insurance would cover your cars I think you'd have to claim from your insurer and of course you'd need to weigh up the costs of excess and potential increase on future premiums versus just getting the scratches repaired yourself

You will need to claim on your car insurance as their household will not cover it. Your car insurance then tries to recover from their house insurance

We had a giant tree fall in our road and took out a garage,shed, fence, cars . It was a complex mess but basically everyone had to claim on their own and the companies then claimed from the householder- who was lovely and offered to pay all excesses

@iknowimcoming

Check your own house insurance to see if you're covered for this - I'm not 100% but I don't think your neighbours home insurance would cover your cars I think you'd have to claim from your insurer and of course you'd need to weigh up the costs of excess and potential increase on future premiums versus just getting the scratches repaired yourself

Thank you for this

For my car it's a no brainer not to claim for as the panels are plastic and easily replaceable

For DHs car we will need to get a full quote as it's likely to be expensive

Just ask them to come over and check your cctv.

@Polnm

You will need to claim on your car insurance as their household will not cover it. Your car insurance then tries to recover from their house insurance

We had a giant tree fall in our road and took out a garage,shed, fence, cars . It was a complex mess but basically everyone had to claim on their own and the companies then claimed from the householder- who was lovely and offered to pay all excesses

You only pay an excess if the monies are not recoverable from a 'guilty party' i.e. if you were at fault.

If he was at fault, then his insurance company would have paid all the excesses of any 'victims'.

I think this should come from your neighbours home insurance?

We had a tile from our roof fall onto our neighbours car and cause damage. We are on good terms but it was obviously our damage to pay.

We claimed on our home insurance for damage to their car successfully and with no issue.

Contact your car insurers and ask for advice

You know they're struggling financially...the likelihood of them having house insurance is fairly low, it's often the first thing people jettison when money is tight unless it's a condition of mortgage. If they rent then they'd only have contents insurance anyway so a moot point.

At best you might be able to claim from your motor insurance for the repairs and your/your husband's insurance attempts to claim from them if they have buildings insurance.

The winds were exceptional so insurance may try to wriggle out of paying. Are you sure it's that expensive, I had hedge scratches and I bought (from dealership) scratch removal stuff that completely covered them. It was £10. If there's dents that's different.

@minnieok

The winds were exceptional so insurance may try to wriggle out of paying. Are you sure it's that expensive, I had hedge scratches and I bought (from dealership) scratch removal stuff that completely covered them. It was £10. If there's dents that's different.

Unfortunately so

It will be a minimum of £600 as that was the quick quote, however once the garage gets it in they have said it might be more if the damage is deeper than first thought

It's a brand new Mercedes so the paint and repair is expensive

@JustCallMeGriffin

You know they're struggling financially...the likelihood of them having house insurance is fairly low, it's often the first thing people jettison when money is tight unless it's a condition of mortgage. If they rent then they'd only have contents insurance anyway so a moot point.

At best you might be able to claim from your motor insurance for the repairs and your/your husband's insurance attempts to claim from them if they have buildings insurance.

The definitely have house insurance as they mentioned a few months ago getting a good deal when they renewed, as they offered to refer us to it and we would then both get cash back

You only pay an excess if the monies are not recoverable from a 'guilty party' i.e. if you were at fault.

If he was at fault, then his insurance company would have paid all the excesses of any 'victims'.

We all paid our own excesses. I don’t know if he got them back. Ours was minimal and so we didn’t take up his offer to pay

Must people we’re delighted that the tree of doom had gone. It had a TPO and he had twice applied to remove it and been refused. The council had declared it sound less than a year before and refused to remove the TPO

A colleague's car was written off during the 1987 hurricane because a neighbour's tree was blown down onto it.

Much to my surprise, the neighbours' house insurance covered it. I thought it would count as an act of god, knowing how keen insurance companies are to get out of paying, but I guess it came under storm damage.

If they own, it will be a condition of their mortgage to have buildings insurance, contents on top is not much extra.

Their stuff damaged yours, put in a claim.

reason #104 why everyone shopuld have full insurance, car, house, building and probably life.

We all paid our own excesses

Why on earth did you do that?

I have to say that there must be more to this than you are seeing.

Their insurance won't cover this. It would be viewed as reckless behaviour by the home owner. I knew storms were coming yesterday and we live near a sea cliff top...so I went around the garden picking up anything that could fly away, and battened down doors, bins etc. You are very, very nice people but your neighbour should pay for the damage. If they cannot do so, they could compensate you in another way like doing some work in your garden as a 'sorry'. If you don't challenge them over this, it will happen again. I have awful, awful neighbours (on all sides sadly). One set started throwing bits of rubbish over my front wall onto the drive (wrappers from other addresses that he deemed was 'my' responsibility)...I let it go a few times, and then challenged him. He denied it, but I have since put up CCTV and there is no more rubbish dumping...please confront these people and ask what they are going to do to remediate the situation.

Tell them right away . Their home insurance should cover it.

Your over thinking don't off er any solution just tell them there wood has damaged your cars show cctv and ask them how they want to sort it.
Claiming on any of your insurances will have implications for you so i wouldn't

The winds were exceptional so insurance may try to wriggle out of paying.

They were also warned about well in advance with full on weather warnings. Which means it sounds like the neighbours should have secured anything that could fly about as per Met Office warnings. Given the neighbours aren't going anywhere (which is always the worry when commencing action to recover losses) the OP should be able to recover their losses quite easily.

In theory this is what you pay car insurance for, but the OP will still need to recover their excess.

All of which being said a lot depends on the neighbours. But based on what the OP has written they are clearly - and financially - liable.

We had a similar issue when next door’s roof tiles blew onto our car in a storm and cause a lot of damage. Our car insurance said the neighbour’s house insurance should cover it and that they wouldn’t, as it is known as ‘an act of God’!! Neighbour wouldn’t co-operate, so our car insurance covered it and attempted to recover the costs from the neighbour’s house insurance. She refused to co-operate again, legal letters were sent etc. It eventually got sorted I think, it was out of our hands at that point and our repairs all got sorted quickly. Our neighbour didn’t speak to us for a few years after though!

Speak to them so they know it's coming, but just let your car insurance deal with it.

I should add that our car insurance only covered it in the end as a ‘gesture of good will make