Should I contact police? If so, how?

[weirdoboelady]

My brand new car was scuffed by someone whilst parked in my street. (Stifled sob). Apparently the offending driver left his name, email and registration number with a friendly neighbour (who I have met before).

Unfortunately the email address is a very bouncy one. The email came straight back to me. So I am hoping that the registration number was actually collected by friendly neighbour, and is correct.

I want to contact the police with the regn number to get them to track him. But does anyone know how to go about this, please?

PS Not really an AIBU, but I couldn't find anywhere sensible to post this. Happy to take advice if anyone feels it should be moved.

PPS I'm off to bed now, so forgive me if I don't respond until the morning.

The last two brand new cars I’ve bought have had someone hit them while parked either scuffs / dents left behind. We’ve just had to deal with it and get the damaged repaired. Doubt police would care unless it’s substantial damage. But it might help to have an incident number if you need to go through insurance for repairs. 101 for non emergency police calls.

You don’t need to contact the police if there is no injury. Just pass the information you have to your insurance company.

You should be able to report it online

Just report to your insurance company. That's what you pay them for.

That’s not correct. It’s a hit add run, the driver has left false details. Hit and run is a crime. Call 101 or report online.

25+ years as a police dispatcher dealing with stuff like this qualifies my advice

That’s not necessarily the case. It might just be an illegible digit in the email.

It’s fine to just pass the reg onto the insurer, they will get details as required from the other party’s insurance company. And if the reg number isn’t correct then the police won’t have any additional information to assist.

did you see the bit about 25+years?

If the reg is incorrect, if you have the make, model and colour of the vehicle, there are further checks which can be carried out to give a good chance of identifying the correct vehicle.

Yes, I am a police officer myself 🙄 Not sure why you having 25+ years working for the police negates a letter having been transcribed incorrectly.

Let the insurance company carry out their due diligence before making this a police matter. Additional checks can be carried out when if they are unable to resolve it initially. Not everything is a crime (despite you leaping straight to that conclusion).

Insurance companies have access to MID (Motor Insurance Database) too, so will carry out a search for the vehicle and owner based on the reg you have. I’d start there.

I was hit in a Tesco car park and the man gave me false details ~ the police could not have cared less …

You always get one know it all on theses posts don’t you bloody hit and run give me strength I had to laugh at how being a police dispatcher for 25 years qualifies her to hand out incorrect advice.

I would just contact the insurance company. Or call 101 if you must. My dp got hit and the other driver sped off. We were so lucky my kids weren’t in the car. Our car was seriously damaged. The police gave an incident number but couldn’t care less about actually investigating it and finding the driver who did it.

Did you get the numberplate?

Well done! 😏 I hope you’ve collected your long service medal!
I would have thought by now having all the facts would be essential, prior to you dishing out advice on what is correct or incorrect.
However, my point still stands.
Information has been left by the driver. You don’t know that the VRM or make and model are incorrect at this stage and the email may well just just be illegible.
The insurance company will deal with this not the police.
From the information presented by the OP - This is not a hit and run

We had a van scrape us on the side of a motorway as they picked the wrong lane and instead of going off it, they wanted to come back on. They didn’t stop for us, drove away. We had dashcam footage and reported on 101 online, as well as insurance. Police said it wasn’t major enough to pursue and insurance claimed we should have let them back on (it was a steady flow of traffic with car behind so wasn’t really feasible) but we decided to just let it go as we didn’t want to lose claims bonus. It’s one of those annoying things.

Thank you all for your help. May I ask a follow up question? If I report it to my insurance company, will they be obliged to act on it? Obviously I don't want to lose my NCB for what is essentially a paint job, which is why I originally wondered if the police database was a possible route. (Obviously they wouldn't give me his details, but they might contact him as he has of course left the scene of an accident.)

The other possibility is that the helpful neighbour has written the email address down incorrectly. I can think of other possible spellings of both the first and second names in this email address, and will now try sending a duplicate email plus explanation to various addresses....