Car insurers what is going on here?!!!

[Cattermole]

So we left our little car parked up in a public car park yesterday, pottered off to do our things, came back to find that the handbrake had failed on the vehicle in the space up the slope to us and shunted our car across the car park.

All details exchanged including some witnesses who saw the other car roll and were good enough to stop either vehicle rolling any further (ours is a little i10 and the vehicle behind was a camper van so even after a foot or so it got quite a belt behind it.)

Anyway, damage was limited but unfortunately because of the way the car's built it's the whole back panel that will need to be replaced. And that is fine, it was an accident, no one was hurt, it's stuff, it's insured.
We checked with the garage we bought the car from and they reckoned £500-£600 for the work, then spoke to the insurers. (Who were delightful, car is booked in, we have a hire car arranged, all is good.)

We've had phone calls this morning from the other person wanting to know if we can not go through the insurance - fortunately we'd got the quote from the garage already so the other person agreed it wasn't really viable for them to pay for the work themselves - but we've just had a call from Liverpool Victoria Insurance claiming to be the other person's insurance company asking if we'd be willing to not put in a claim but get the work done separately!

LV are not the other person's insurance btw.
Why would they do this? And who's playing silly buggers?

You mean you had a call from someone claiming to be from LV? A genuine insurance company would not phone and claim to be someone's insurer...

That was our immediate thought too @DadDadDad but I ran the number through WhoCallsMe and it came up as LV.

Then I am baffled, unless the other owner is confused and LV is their insurer? Either way, I'd always go through insurance to claim, just to keep it all above board and make sure I don't get messed around by the other party - leave it to your insurer to sort out with theirs.

This reminds of the time my car rolled forward out of its space at work and gently bumped a colleague's car. No damage done, but the guy from security enjoyed showing me the CCTV footage of my car slowly creeping across the car park....

I bet! It's a horrible feeling isn't it when you come back and your car is not where you left it, especially if it's crept across the car park all by itself.
I know you're supposed to be impartial and unbiased and everything but I really felt for the other people. Absolutely nothing they could have done and they were mortified, poor souls.

Its very common for the fault party insurer to offer services to the non fault party. Insurers do it as it's cheaper for them to organise the repairs and hire themselves than risk the person using an accident management company which inflates the costs massively. There's 2 possibilities here:

Either LV does insure the fault vehicle and the owner either was confused about who their insurer was and gave the wrong name or possibly the name their gave you is a smaller company that is underwritten by LV. For example quote me happy are underwritten by Aviva.

Otherwise could possibly be a phishing call but seems unlikely if you've checked the number and it's coming up as LV.

It’s probably LV underwriting the “named” insurer. What’s the name you were given?

Those are good points. What name did the other driver give for their insurer? Did they just name a broker?

@tinierclanger he didn't - that was why I checked 1471. He rang up (clearly from home, there was a dog barking in the background) and said "I'm from FirstNameOfOtherParty's insurers" - but didn't say which - and I thought really are you?? It seemed very informal.

Thanks @Nookable that makes sense. Looking at some of the LV comments on WhoCallsMe it looks like they have form for taking the initiative!

I was thinking phishing too. Sometimes you’ll get fake websites with numbers cropping up on google. Double check for LV’s true number.

And @DadDadDad it was Safeguard - who I thought were attached to Swinton?
(They specialise in motor homes - we're with Swinton for our van.)

I wondered if once you put in an insurance claim the details go onto some sort of universal database - so not precisely phishing but more a sort of vehicular ambuilance-chasing if that makes sense?

No, I mean what company did the other party say they were with? You should be able to check the underwriters.

I mean, it doesn’t really matter if it’s all in hand but that would explain it for you. As a PP said, it is common for the other party insurers to approach to do the repair if there is no question of fault, because it keeps the costs down. Usually means you don’t have to faff about paying the excess and reclaiming it, so can make it easier for you too.

Xpost.

Safeguard is underwritten by LV.
www.safeguarduk.co.uk/motorhome-insurance/

Mystery solved

Swinton is just a broker.

Awesome, thank you @tinierclanger.

Just for future reference then (this being the first time we've ever had to make a claim!) if the other people's insurers do the work, do we get any discussion in which garage does it?

Not normally no, they will want to do it through their own approved repairers.

Our company are willing to let the other party choose which garage they want to use. Our only concern is that the other party does not go into credit hire.

@tinierclanger

Not normally no, they will want to do it through their own approved repairers.

They will want to but they really cannot force that. However, they may cap any payout to a reasonable amount if you don’t use their approved repairer. This stops cowboys inflating the price.