Insurance Repairs

Insurance repairs.

No one will ever want to be in the position that they need to involve insurance company, but it never ceases to amaze us to what lengths people will do to avoid it altogether.

We’ve had customers pay four figure sums privately not to involve the insurance company, usually when it’s their fault. We all know that making a claim will inevitably mean that there will be an increase in premium come renewal and that will stay with you for five years. I can understand it in some very limited circumstances, but generally when a repair requires parts or is more involved than just a scuff or scrape it could still be worthwhile considering making a claim.

Here's the reasons why you should consider making a claim:

· Rising costs – We all know that in the last couple of years everything has gone up, not just in the motor trade but literally everything. The value of cars has shot up, the parts for them has too. We were quoted £1,800 for a headlight on a 3 series recently! Would you want to pay for that privately?

· Complexity of vehicles – repair processes now take longer than they did several years ago, your car is an incredibly complicated bit of kit. To make sure it’s back to pre-accident condition you will also need to factor things like making sure all the safety systems (ADAS) are re calibrated correctly. A lot of cars are getting fancier paint colours that require specialist paint. This takes longer to apply as well as the consumables being more expensive.

· Third party – Accidents happen, and I know a lot of my customers wish to settle the damage outside of insurance to make the third parties’ life easier. Ultimately your vehicle needs to be put back into pre accident condition and cutting corners so it’s cheaper for the third party doesn’t seem a good idea in our book. After all this is why we are all insured. In the event that a car body repair is booked in privately and there is more damage sustained not visible after estimate, this will become a difficult conversation to have with the third party as they already won’t want to be paying what’s estimated. Insurance takes all this out of the equation.

We’re not saying that small bumper scuffs and such like should be put through insurance, but where parts and added costs of doing the job correctly will affect the end price, it’s quite unlikely your premium is going to increase by this amount unless your excess is excessively high.

It’s also important to remember it’s your legal right as to where the car is repaired, not the insurers, so talk to us about how we can help.

Alongside this we also run a non-fault accident repair service as well.