Car insurance / Write off

[FawnFrenchieMum]

Posting here for traffic

DS has crashed his car tonight, thankfully only him involved and he’s not hurt.
The car is almost certainly a write off. We have in haste rung the insurance, although it was a third party out of hours service that has recovered the car and taken it into storage for the weekend.

Car worth about £1k, insurance cost £4k just three weeks ago. Guessing excess is approx £500 but need to double check.

Now they have collected the car. Are we obliged to continue with the claim or can we get it back (and pay the costs) and scrap the car. I understand we still have to report the accident but if we claim, I assume the insurance will automatically end and we lose all the £4k. If we don’t claim, will they allow us to transfer the policy to another vehicle?

Any other suggestions on the best way financially to deal with the above situation.

When my car was damaged, the insurance people told me what they would pay out for a write off. They also offered to adjust the offer any a small amount and let me keep the car.

It was written off by the damage was only cosmetic. I had it repaired and back on the road within days.

With the same policy or did it end your policy and you needed new insurance?

When a car is sold, usually you can get a refund on the insurance premium for the unused portion of the year (less an admin charge). You might be able to have a partial refund in your circumstances too if the car is written off. Worth asking your insurance company.

I 'bought mine back' too after an accident, not my fault. They value the car for what it would have been worth prior to the accident then gave me 90% of this back. The 10% would have been what they might have got for scrap. I got it back and paid for the repair and the same insurance continued.
For info got about £4500 back and repair cost £1800 so made some money, although car pretty worthless now as it's classed as a write off. Will have to drive it till it falls apart!

Im pretty sure there is no refund if you’ve made a claim.

I thought it was no refund is there's another claim, not the claim made for right off.

Personally I would ring them up and ask op so you know your options and what is likely to happen.
This doesn't make any difference to the claim.

If he's getting another car they will be able to just amend the policy to the new car. If he's not then yes as there's a claim they won't refund. I would ask them though if you don't go ahead with the claim would he get a pro-rata refund as that may be the best way to go about it if he's not getting a new car.

We bought dd a car to learn in recently for 2.4k, spent the same on hybrid insurance. 3 weeks later a lorry drove in to the back of her when she was stationary at a roundabout and wrote it off!

The insurance offered us 3.7k for the car, or 3.5k and we could buy the car back for 300 which we did and only cost is £300 to fix the car with the help from eBay and a friend (it was the boot/bumper and one of the rear lights).

Dd’s has banked the rest for next years insurance.

Oh, and edited to include that the kept the same insurance policy.

That's correct. And if the car is written off the policy ends immediately with no refund.

If you don't claim (you can stop it) then the policy won't be terminated but it's debatable whether you can transfer it to another vehicle without having issues at this stage.

You generally only have to notify your insurer of an accident/incident at renewal time if there's no claim being made, but I don't know how it would work with having already informed them via actions taken so far with this claim you've started - i.e. whether they would take it into account when re-quoting for a new vehicle.

The only thing you can do is talk to them.

They are not open until tomorrow. I think at this point we might be best to cancel the claim, pay the recovery and then cancel the policy. Get a refund for the remaining policy.