To think I shouldn’t have to use my car insurance for this?

[Mar124]

In my work place carpark, a large tree limb fell on my car damaging it badly. I was in the car when it happened. The car is now financially written off, and I’ve had no car for two weeks. This is because I was told my employer’s insurance would cover it. I was since told, they will not cover it now and I’ve to use my own insurance. I’ve never had to touch insurance in my life and now face losing my no claims bonus higher premium etc. for something completely not my fault. AIBU to not want to use my own insurance, when I was told it was being sorted by my employer?

You really need to speak to your insurer as they will decide whether to write it off or whether it's reparable and how much they'll pay out.

@Chiar …….I was in the car. It was terrifying. Being in the car saved my life, as multiple
people have told me upon seeing both what fell and the damage caused to car. Thankfully,
it was metal and not me!

It’s a bitch @Mar124 , but that is the point of fully comp insurance- covers for stuff that “happens”.
if you NCB is protectd you won’t lose it all, but the reality is anything happening to your vehicle will result in increased premiums, whether or not your fault and whether covered by your policy or someone else’s.

@Keepingthingsinteresting Thank you that’s helpful. And thanks for recognising that it’s a crap situation! Hate anything like this. Very happy that I’m okay obviously though!

They will try and offer the lowest amount possible for the car, especially if it was more than a few years old
If you think it's worth more, it will be up to you to prove it to them by finding cars of similar age, mileage, condition on the market and showing them

Second line of the OP: ‘I was in the car when it happened’ 🥴

Literally the purpose of insurance.
Sucks yes, but your employer is not liable.

Be grateful it's the car that's the write off and not you.
Wait til you find out your insurer will only offer you less than "we buy any car" prices.

That’s really unfair. I guess it depends if employer knew tree was damaged / likely to fall. Otherwise it’s an accident and it’s annoying, similar happened to me when my car got written off after a pick up truck damaged 3 cars in the lay-by where my car was parked. I had to claim on insurance and had no car for a month. I’ve paid extra premium this year to get a hire car if my car is written off

Hopefully you have protected your NCD if you have many years? Your insurance will still go up for claiming but at least you still get a discount and after 5 years you dont need to declare the claim.

you should have already informed your insurers 2 weeks ago the car is off the road /written off.

It was wrong of your employer to say that their insurance would cover it. The underwriters need to look at your claim first. So basically, you tell your insurance and make the claim. Your insurance underwriters look at the claim. They then decide if it’s the other party’s fault and contact their insurance (by default, most times, unless you rear ended someone, the insurance pretty much always say it’s the other people’s fault). The other insurance company will look at the circumstances and then let your insurance company know if they agree that they’re liable, or they don’t agree. All this is done behind the scences, but either way, if your insurance covers a rental vehicle or whatever, you should get that, and a payout for your damaged vehicle.

But you must make the claim.

Have you got gap insurance as well? If not your insurance will only pay out what the car was worth at time of accident, not what you need to pay for a new car.

And always pay the extra to protect your no claims bonus, its like £1 extra a month.

You notify your insurers and let them deal with it

I have my no claims protected and if the premium goes up I shop around , none of that means I’d get into a stew about using the insurance that I’ve paid for

@Blanketpolicy They know what happened.
I am waiting to hear back from them. Car is physically drivable but I won’t be driving it till it’s fixed or I buy a new one. It will be the latter now as the figures are clear they will write it off. That wasn’t the question I asked.

And that's the important thing really.
Cars are replaceable.
Human beings are not.
The God's were smiling on you OP - even though it probably doesn't feel like it just now.

this will depend upon alot of circumstances. So if, for example, its an ash tree (which are notorious for dropping boughs at the best of time) which should have been assessed for ash die back and hasnt, and thats why it fell. Or a dead branch that was a hazard and hasnt been removed. Is the tree actually in the car park or is it on neighbouring land and overhanging?
these are the kinds of thing which could prove negligence and accountability.

If it was during those excessive high winds and nobody could have forseen it, well unfortuantely thats considered an 'act of god'

@Mar124 , it may well be seeing if the car is repairable even if it is written off . We’ve done that before , it was an easy process and we had no issues with getting insurance on it afterwards . In our case it was an old car so the write off pay out was only about £1100 , it cost us about the same to fix but because I’d had it from new to actually replace would have cost several thousand as I wouldn’t have bought an equivalent old car from someone else IYSWIM .

something similar happened to me (though I wasn’t in the car) and I was also shocked that I had to claim on my insurance, and pretty cross about it at the time tbh. So on that from YANBU, but I’m afraid that’s not the law so your employer’s ins won’t cover it.

It is up to the insurance company loss adjustor to determine if the vehicle is written off, or fixable. Generally any damage to the roof near the centre post, the car is written off as it’s not safe due to the centre post being what gives the car stability and it can’t be fixed as it is what gives the car its tensile strength.

You should have protected the NCD, so check that.

I know it’s been quite a bad winter so far in terms of winds etc., in the U.K. so if it’s determined to be an “Act of God”, the other insurance company will refuse liability.

Any personal injury that you had can also be pursued. It sounds quite scary, so you may find that you’re not sleeping well, have elements of PTSD, require counselling, etc., so keep your GP and insurance company apprised of any after effects of the accident.

Sorry you received poor advice at the outset. It sucks, especially after such a scary experience. Unfortunately for you, it’s unlikely your employer will be liable unless they were negligent in some way. I understand that it feels unfair because you did nothing wrong, but also it’s important that you understand how insurance works. As someone else said, it’s not a no blame bonus. Look up all the things that can raise your premium: it’s quite eye-opening.

Were these people employees of the insurance company? If not you must know that what they say is meaningless, if they are them you should pursue it to u dedtand why they are now saying something different

I realise thst your future insurance premiums will increase if you claim, but surely you protected your No Claims Discount if you are on the maximum?

This happened to us but the other way round. A large section of one of our cherry trees was sheared off in a huge storm and fell on a neighbours car (London taxi) that was parked outside in the lane. We offered all the relevant information and were fully prepared for them to claim from our insurance. But it never happened - they had to claim via their vehicle insurance (which may have been the company vehicle insurance rather then personal, unsure) but the vehicle insurers never contacted or even asked for our insurance information. Very odd.

I’m really, really disappointed that you didn’t use this as an opportunity to say ‘owning a tree doesn’t conifer strict liability’

sorry, my bad! Terrifying.

This just let your insurance deal with it - you won’t lose your no claims. Forward all correspondence and don’t forget to claim for anything in the car and remove all the little stuff like car mats, cds etc and anything in the glove box etc and claim for anything you need like taxis etc get receipts for everything all taxis etc don’t stop doing Tesco shopping etc just claim it all back until they pay up - I did. I even claimed back time for telephone calls - their fault you shouldn’t be out of pennies!