Someone reversed into my fence panel. What would you do?

[ItsABatFaceThing]

On Saturday morning, a woman reversed into our fence. She lives out the back of us - don’t know her at all as we are in a very small cul de sac of 4 houses and she lives over the back where there are parking spaces outside of a few houses.

I didn’t realise she’d done it as it’s in our back garden - until she knocked on my door and told me. I’m grateful she was honest about it and commend her for doing so as we genuinely would have been so puzzled otherwise

She said she was on heavy duty antibiotics and had her two small children in the car and just misjudged. We went into the garden to see the damage - and yeah. She’s caved in the fence, torn it from the posts and it cannot be put back into place

I took her number, told her not to stress , thanked her for letting me know and advised I’d be in touch once I’d got a quote for the damage and we’d take it from there

A local fencing guy came out - we’ve used him on and off for years. The upshot is, it’s almost £400 to put right (we do not have basic fence panels .. I’ve no idea what they’re called but they’re grooved with horizontal posts across them)

I sent her over the quote and she messaged back to say she’s a single parent in social housing and she doesn’t know what to do

So. What do I do? Tell her to go through her insurance? I appreciate an excess payment can be a lot. Do we suck up the cost ourselves and ‘be kind?’ ( we can afford to do this if we have to BUT not easily on a whim and not without feeling it) or .. something else?

What would you do?

Just reply oh I know, it’s so rubbish when this type of thing happens. Can you let me know your insurance details so we can put a claim in or would you rather sort it with them directly? Thanks

I’d say something along these lines.

But if she is genuinely struggling to pay £400, I'm guessing that she won't have £200 down the back of the sofa either - so still potentially a hassle.

I'm absolutely not saying that she shouldn't pay; but from her pov, £200 is still likely a sizeable amount, albeit only half as much as the true cost.

Can you claim on your own home insurance?

I think she's being given far too easy ride about her decision to drive under the influence of powerful antibiotics, which she must have had a good idea about the strength and side-effects of.

I know it's not quite the same thing, but if she'd been a stressed single mum who'd had a large glass of wine just to help her cope with it all, then another, then she'd had to drive out to take her kids somewhere... there would be no sympathy whatsoever - even if it had 'only' been a fence and not a person.

It's really simple - car accident = car insurance.

Get her insurance details and deal with them.

Ignore all the endless sob stories, half of which won't be true.

This is simply the cost of having a car - and lots of people can't afford one. (me!)

Yes, people are always quick with their sob story - whether it's true, false or somewhat embellished. Even if her situation is exactly as she presents it, it's not only single mums who can hugely struggle to stump up an unexpected £400. We needed a new radiator for our (old) car recently, which cost a similar amount, and our car stayed on the drive for several weeks until we could afford to get it replaced... and that wasn't anything that we could have predicted or been at fault for.

As somebody for whom money is a struggle, you would think that she'd be much more cautious not to behave in such a way that she might end up with a big preventable bill; she's not the lady of the manor who can act impetuously and just throw money at it to make the consequences go away.

Surely she deals with this through her car insurance since she did the damage with her car???

She’s asked to give me a call at 11m to discuss the quote.

I think i will go in with a position of being sympathetic - which I am! - and with an assumption that she’s either paying outright or using her car insurance . I will offer that she’s welcome to get her own quote.

and will just see where that lands . Ultimately we will pay if she really is unable to -w e can’t leave it as it is - it’s sort of propped up and splintered!

And yep - we can afford to pay it but it would need to come out of savings - we don’t have the flex in our monthly budget to cover it

Unfortunately she did the damage. Why should you pay?

The thing about her car insurance is that she possibly has a high excess, meaning g that she would have to pay the several hundred herself anyway, and her premiums would then go up . Not your problem OP, but it is clear you are worrying about leaving her in difficulties. Maybe suggest she pays half and you cover the rest, if you can afford it?

Why on earth are you paying for this woman's mistake?

Sympathy is for fools. You have no idea whether she is telling the truth or not.

If she can afford a car, she can afford the issues that come with it.

I wouldn’t be swayed by her sob stories. It’s down to her to pay. There may not be any excess if it’s for a third party claim. Similar happened to me years ago. My kids weee being pains in the arse; distracted me reversing out the drive and I scraped the bumper of a car parked opposite. It was parked stupidly but was still my problem. I knocked the door, gave them my insurance details and it was sorted. Also £400 but I didn’t have to pay any excess. Shit happens that’s why we have insurance it she still is responsible

People on here are always so generous with other people’s money

We had a similar issue with our next door neighbour (drove into our wall, took the whole thing down & damaged our car parked on the drive with the debris too). We were neighbourly, gave her time to pay, felt sorry for her as she was a single parent, didnt have much money etc. I completely regret it.

She ended up not paying for the wall and then moving out 5 months later (it was rented). At that point we let her landlord know what she had done (she had omitted that when they did her move out inspection). They werent happy & said they would withhold her deposit until it was sorted out. She got very angry, sent us lots of abusive messages etc. It was an incredibly stressful time.

In the end I rang her car insurance company myself, reported the incident (she hadnt told them about it either) and they agreed to pay for the repair of the wall. It cost nearly £3000 and they paid without any fuss after seeing the photos of the new wall in its place.

What I have learnt is that I will NEVER not claim on their insurance immediately again. That is the point of insurance after all. If they were at fault they need to put it right & I will always involve their insurance going forwards (fingers crossed nothing like this happens again). I suggest you do the same.

Well I was swayed. Just a bit

She rang me yesterday and said she completely accepted she was at fault and that she thought the quote was reasonable

However. She is a single parent and lives in social housing and works as a cleaner around her children - one of which has additional needs although she added that wasn’t my issue etc etc

I suggested her car insurance but she got divorced relatively recently and has only just taken out the policy in her name which she said would be hugely costly to her in terms of claiming

She offered to pay it all in instalments and on top of that clean my house every week for a few months! Erk!

I said we would pay the lot upfront as we have to. I did point out that we would have to take this from our savings. I have said I will accept £200 from her to be paid in two instalments and she was very grateful

So I’m a bit of a soft touch I know. The fact is, I wouldn’t be gunning for her regardless and - luckily for her - shes caused damaged that is ‘relatively’ not too bad, cost wise. This would be a different matter if it was any more money than it is

Oh and I politely declined the cleaning of course!

@DrMarkSloan that does sound very stressful

This.

While she is clearly struggling at the moment and you seem to have been very nice up until now OP, ultimately, she has had a car accident that was her fault and therefore needs to pay. She has insurance to do that.
If it turns out her insurance refuse to pay out because she was driving on medication she was not allowed to drive on, that’s on her. It doesn’t matter what her circumstances were at the time, if she wasn’t supposed to drive, she shouldn’t have driven, and, frankly, she should be thanking her lucky stars she only hit a fence!

I think that’s a very reasonable solution and is probably what I would have done under the circumstances. I can understand how expensive it would be for the woman to claim off her insurance, although that’s obviously not your problem. I parked my car in a supermarket car park one day last year and came back to find the passenger door was caved in. Although it was 100% clear that it wasn’t my fault, and despite the fact that I had a protected NCD, hadn't made a claim in over 35 years, I still had to pay a significant excess when the repairs were carried out, and when my policy renewed three months later, the premium had nearly doubled. Even getting every price comparison I could find, and changing insurers, my premium still increased by £150

Why are people going on about the cost of her claiming her insurance? You only pay the excess for damage to your own car eg if you damage it and are comprehensively insured. You don’t pay it for claims by third parties, although your NCD may be affected and you’d have to declare it

She still needs to inform her insurance company of the accident. No way is it going to cost her £400 in additional premium even if she does make a claim. Very silly of her to offer to settle the claim, as she will be worse off.