AIBU to think someone has made a fraudulent car insurance claim?

[RealAquaCat]

Hello!
So just over 2 months ago a scraped a parked car while parking next to it (stupid I know, it’s the only accident I’ve ever had). The damage was very minor, I scraped the front corner of their drivers side with the front corner of my passenger side. I left a note with my details and offered to pay for the damage. The owner of the car got in touch with me and said they would let me know when they’ve got some quotes - and then I never heard from them again.
Today I’ve had an email from my insurance telling me that a claim was settled to the amount of nearly £2500?! I should add that this was a 12 year old car - I looked at how much the car was worth and it’s only worth around the same amount.
I did take photos at the time, and even had a friend of mine who is a detailer have a look at the damage and he said it would be no more than a few hundred if that.

Is there anything I can do about this? Or is it just an ‘it is what it is’ situation?
If they wanted to lie about the damage to be able to make a decent claim then that would make sense why they didn’t take me up on my offer to pay for the damage myself.

Do I just let it go and look forward to my insurance increase next year?

Did you contact your insurance company at the time?

I had this. Very very minor scrape, offered to settle outside of insurance but they wanted £700 for work which really could never have been more than £300 (they even had quotes for £300 but said the garage was too far away) so I said let's go through insurance. I reported it but they didn't claim for five months at which point it suddenly was an insurance claim of £3,500! I would assume they'd damaged the car completely separately and then decided to try their luck with my insurance company to get it fixed. I sent the pictures to the insurance company as well as evidence of them messaging me with a quote to get the work done for £700... Insurance company could not have been less interested despite the fact it was pretty clearly fraud.

Yes I did

Thanks for your response, I’ve yet to contact my insurance company about it but I’m sure they’ll be just as uninterested. What an absolute joke 🤦🏻‍♀️

So they put in a claim with your insurance company and your insurance company never contacted you to ask for your version of events or the photos you took?

Once it's in an insurers hands it's a closed shop, they used approved garages and agree inflated prices amongst themselves - I am an accountant at one of the UKs largest insurers.

What I have no idea on is whether, once a claim has been made against you, a £300 claim makes any difference compared to a £5k claim in respect of future premiums. I assumed a black mark was the same regardless of quantum of the claim

It's not exactly fraud but it is insurance company policy to effectively maximise all claims.

Eveb if a panel is damaged and could be hammered back into shape and resprayed with a nearly-matching colour for £500, the insurance company will not go for that option. They will insist on a dealer-supplied brand-new panel fitted to showroom-new standard and reprayed with a perfect match (which will often mean a complex multi-layer spraying process with eg pearlescent effects even for what you thought was a fairly bog-standard colour). The reason for insisting on nothing less than brand-new showroom-perfect replacement parts is because if a vehicle is repaired to a reasonable acceptable standard without this, and is then subsequently involved in any kind of accident where the less-than-perfect condition of a component involved in a previous repair could be a factor, it opens up such a nightmare can-of-worms for who is legally liable for what. None of the companies want that fight, hence what could have been "ok" for £500 requires the car to be taken apart and large pieces replaced and tbh £2,500 is getting off lightly.

Around a year ago a driver went into the back of me and did a slight bit of damage to my bumper, her car was much worse (I have a landrover). We swapped numbers and she asked if I would be happy to sort it without insurance and I agreed.

I got a quote from a local garage - they said it would take a day and it would be around £200 so I messaged her. She said it was too much, her dad would do it, then started being arsey and ignored me for a while.

I said I was going to have to go through insurance, the damage wasn't huge but still annoying - anyway she blocked me meaning I went through the insurance and had to use thier approved garage.

TBH I was mortified by how much of a drama they made, they picked my car up on a pickup truck and I had a courtesy car for about a fortnight as they "couldn't find the part" I then ended up with a whole new bumper.

It was all unnecessary and the bill to her insurance must have been huge, but that’s insurance companies.

Happened to me, they claimed for 3 grand and I got a court/legal letter a year after and insurance paid out more

My VW up rolled about 5m back at low speed (handbrake failed) along a slope that is hard pushed to be described as a slope and bumped gently into their Toyota hilux
My car had no damage but somehow caused 5 grands worth to a car top gear couldn't destroy

My son had this happen, he bumped into the back of a volvo, no damage to his car and only damage to volvo was a bent numberplate, we took pictures, and told insurance comapny sent jn the pictures,6 months later he had a letter saying it was settle and they had written the other car off, he rang explained gave pictures again but it didn't make a jot of difference. Funnily enough the man is still driving around in the same volvo as he slammed his brakes on in front of my car luckily I was kind of alert to what was going to happen. He got out of his car and checked the back I said to him I didn't hit and I have a dashcam to prove it, he got back in and drove away. Mentioned it to a police friend and he said yes crap like that happens!

No not at all, first I’ve heard about it today

That sounds odd every claim I have had has involved in loads of back and forwards and form filing but I've always been the injured party so to speak so maybe it was because of that. Seems odd they wouldn't ask you anything at all.

Send it to the insurance company and let them deal with it. Check if you have a protected no claims bonus. If you do, your premium won't go up.

Don't get upset about the additional costs. Insurers pay up because it's cheaper than challenging it.