Does anyone work in car insurance and can help me answer this question please?
My son is just coming up to the end of his first year of driving so his insurance needs renewing soon.
He is a young driver, only just 18, so he needs all the help he can get when it comes to car insurance premiums!
In October he was involved in a very minor collision. Someone pulled out on him from a parking bay and their driver's side hit his passenger side. There was very minor paint damage to both cars, and even though it was the other persons fault, they both decided not to make any claim out of it.
Because my son's car has a black box, we thought it was best to let his insurance know what had happened, because in their terms and conditions it says to let them know about any incident, however minor, and we thought that the blackbox might have picked up the impact anyway.
They said it would be put on his file as a notification only, and made a note that no claims were being pursued by either party (his scratches literally came out with T-Cut).
They did ask us to provide the other parties details, but we only had the persons registration number. It was my son's first incident and he didn't realise that he needed anything other than her numberplate. They chased us for a couple of weeks for her name and address, but we had no way of getting it, so we then had an email from the insurance company say the notification had been closed down/completed.
So now he needs to renew his insurance, and obviously it asks of any incidents or claims in the last five years.
Do I mention this when looking for a renewal?
The problem is that none of the options kind of match what happened. Basically because nothing really happened and there was no claim. But I don't want to say there has been no incident at all, and then he gets in trouble if he should need to claim and someone somewhere flags up this "notification only" in the future.
Car and van insurance is the bane of my existence! :(
If anyone can help/advise I'd be really grateful.