26 Feb 2015

A question about : How long to get car insurance excess back?

In early December my car was bumped in a car park and the driver admitted liability and supplied insurance details. All being processed through my insurance (Esure) as a non fault claim.

Car was repaired in early January and we paid the excess to the garage.

Trouble is i'm still waiting for the excess. I've phoned Esure on several occasions only to be told each time that they are waiting on the other party/have submitted another report to the other party/have made a note on the file, etc etc

Just wondering how long anyone else had to wait before seeing their excess?

TIA

Best answers:

  • You are pursuing your own insurer when you should be pursuing the third party insurer.
    Your excess is an uninsured loss, so if you have "legal" cover with your policy you can get them to get this back for you.
    If not its easy to DIY.
    Send a letter to the third party insurer with proof of the sum involved and ask them to reimburse you
  • Sounds like the third party insurers are having problems with their policyholder not reporting the incident or at least not co-operating with their request for further info etc.
    This will delay the third party insurers in agreeing to refund the excess if they are not able to validate the claim (such as checking with their insured that the incident happened as you allege for example)
    As Quentin says, get the details of the insurer for the other party and write a letter enclosing the excess receipt (send a copy) and give them 14 days to make payment, or if you have legal cover with your insurance, get your insurers to put them onto the case and they will do the chasing for you.
  • Thank you - I do have have legal cover but Esure don't seem in much of a rush to claim the excess back for me!
    I only have the other parties insurance company name which is Covea, and then my insurance claim number. I can't find the bit of paper anywhere with all of his other details on it which I initially used when I rang my insurance
    Is this enough to contact Covea with?
  • Your "legal cover" is a separate thing to your insurance cover, and will (should) have different contact details.
    As you paid for legal cover you may as well get them on the job.
    If you want to DIY, then you may need more details to allow Covea to identify the file.
    Ask Esure for the third party reg/name/address (though the reg should be enough for them to identify the culprit)
    Next time you are involved in a claim where liability is clear cut consider claiming directly from the third party insurer and avoid the hassle of paying and reclaiming your excess (as well as temporarily losing NCD till the matter is concluded which can be a pain if you come to renew before getting the matter concluded and want to change insurers)
  • Helpful advice. Many thanks
  • In the good old days when I did claims we would simply deal with excess reclaiming in house when the person had LE cover as it literally was a case of doing a system generated letter and selecting "option D" to include the "please reimburse our insured's excess of ЈX", normally done in the same letter as "option C" which was "please reimburse our outlay of ЈX".
    To actually instruct solicitors you had to do a whole new "letter" (it actually went as fax but it was the letter system that generated it) and then freehand type in about the UIL of the Excess. The solicitor then had to contact our insured to discuss UILs and the insured post them evidence of the excess.
    Right after the end of my claims days the process changed and it was deemed us doing it in house was non-compliant to the terms of policy and so despite more work and it being slower it all went to the legal firms to deal with.
    Your insurers sound to be dealing with it in house which in theory should make it less painful for you but they are reliant on the Third Party Insurer sending them the cheque, as well as probably one for their own outlay. Unfortunately insurers work on different timescales to you and I and so the TPI probably arent working too quickly and your insurers arent pushing as much as you'd like.
    As others have said, its a simple thing to do to reclaim it so you could attempt to do it directly but if the TPI is having issues with their insured then it wont make a massive amount of difference.
  • You didn't say where you get this from?
    (It doesn't happen)
  • It doesn't happen as you say ("a virtual certainty")
    And that is certainly not a "fact"!
    (How do you square this with the many insurers that farm off claims to management companies when their client is blameless?)
    You are making this up.
    It is a well trodden path to contact the third party when liability is clear cut. This keeps your NCD intact and avoids paying excess - and you face less pressure to stop you going to your own choice of repairer
  • Were this kid correct all your clients would be unhappy to discover their ncd reduced just cos they engaged an ambulance chaser
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