Metropol

Yo,

A few weeks back, I was unfortunate enough to have my car stolen, which was later found crushed into a cube at a local scrap yard. I took the advice of the police, which was to contact my insurance and see about claiming for it. I lodged with them a claim for £500, which isn't much really for a good condition L reg Vauxhall Corsa - it certainly wouldn't pay for another in the same condition. Alas, I later find out that if I continue with my claim, the insurance for my new car goes up by around £600.

What the hell! What's the point in insurance if it costs you more to claim than not to in a situation like mine? Does anyone have any experience of this, and any advice as to what I could do? I've considered suing the scrapyard for accepting my car without any of the documents (which AIUI is illegal anyway) - would I be successful? I'm not very up on legal stuff so any advice would be appreciated!

all new Phil wrote:Yo,

A few weeks back, I was unfortunate enough to have my car stolen, which was later found crushed into a cube at a local scrap yard. I took the advice of the police, which was to contact my insurance and see about claiming for it. I lodged with them a claim for £500, which isn't much really for a good condition L reg Vauxhall Corsa - it certainly wouldn't pay for another in the same condition. Alas, I later find out that if I continue with my claim, the insurance for my new car goes up by around £600.

What the hell! What's the point in insurance if it costs you more to claim than not to in a situation like mine? Does anyone have any experience of this, and any advice as to what I could do? I've considered suing the scrapyard for accepting my car without any of the documents (which AIUI is illegal anyway) - would I be successful? I'm not very up on legal stuff so any advice would be appreciated!

Yo-yo

Is £500 the book value of the car? Who advised you to set that figure?

A £600 premium increase does seem very steep to me, but as I don't drive I have no frame of reference for insurance cost. If it had been a £10K car then £600 would be easier to swallow, I suppose.

Can you give any more information regarding the documents issue? Who passed the car on and in what condition was it? It it was effectively totalled, a judge may rule that liability only extends to its scrap value; but it would be worth exploring this issue further.

i'd pop in to your local citizens advice bureau and explain the situation to them - and see if you do have a case - and i'm fairly certain that you do.

you may want to write a letter sent via recorded delivery to the company secretary explaining the situation (ie car scrapped without supporting documentation) and requesting that if the company does not make good your losses you will take legal action to reclaim them. state that if they do not respond within 7 days you will take action.

if the scrapping company is a limited company, find the address of their registered office via companies house and send your letter there and to the yard itself if it is different.

seeing as you are only talking about a few hundred quid they'll probably settle straight away.

Cheers for the advice... to answer Gavin, in order for a car to be registered with the DVLA as being scrapped, the Registration Certificate of the car should be signed by both the car's owner and a representative from the scrap yard, and sent to the DVLA. Seeing as I still have this certificate, then obviously something has gone wrong. I think the rules say something about this being possible without the documents, but only if the vehicle has been recovered by a third party (ie if the car had been dumped somewhere) and hence they aren't available. This wasn't the case, the car was taken there by a known (to the police) criminal, who gave his address as being a notoriously dodgy area, and therefore the yard should not have accepted it without the necessary paperwork.

Anyway, as suggested, I shall pay a trip to the Citizen's Advice Bureau on Monday and see what they recommend.

Cheers again.

Yes, I think you do have a case against the scrapyard. Your case would be based on the obvious breach of their legal duties before they destroyed your property. If you do choose to sue them it can be done quite cheaply and easily without a solicitor using Moneyclaim Online. Making a claim for £500 will only cost you a £50 court fee, which they'll have to pay back to you if you win.

Be wary, though, because these scrapyards are often run by some pretty nasty characters with criminal connections, and suing them will involve giving them your name and address. I'd try and find out a bit about the owner before doing anything.

It does seem weird, though, that the scrapyard chose to scrap the car instead of selling it for a few hundred quid (I'm presuming it was a roadworthy little runner in good nick). And what did the thief have to gain by nicking a car and then giving it to the scrapyard? They pay near enough bugger all for scrap cars nowadays. I suspect the thief wanted it to use for a robbery or something, and then wanted it destroyed. The scrapyard must have either known or suspected that something dodgy was going on.

What the hell! What's the point in insurance if it costs you more to claim than not to in a situation like mine? Does anyone have any experience of this, and any advice as to what I could do? I've considered suing the scrapyard for accepting my car without any of the documents (which AIUI is illegal anyway) - would I be successful? I'm not very up on legal stuff so any advice would be appreciated!

As with any other transfer of ownership, if you transfer ownership of your vehicle to a scrapyard for scrapping, the appropriate portion of the V5 or V5C must be completed and sent to DVLA.

However, since your car was L-reg, then it would originally have been issued with an old-style V5, before the tear-off-and-complete sections were introduced. The practice with these logbooks was for the seller to give the document to the purchaser, who would then send it off and receive a new one in his/her name from DVLA.

A convincing cock and bull story from the thief might have been that he had purchased the car and received an old-style logbook, sent it off, and decided to scrap the car a short while later without receivng a new logbook. Although the scrappy (sorry, 'vehicle dismantler') probably saw straight through this, he could still have argued the case if there was any comeback.

It does seem weird, though, that the scrapyard chose to scrap the car instead of selling it for a few hundred quid (I'm presuming it was a roadworthy little runner in good nick). And what did the thief have to gain by nicking a car and then giving it to the scrapyard? They pay near enough bugger all for scrap cars nowadays. I suspect the thief wanted it to use for a robbery or something, and then wanted it destroyed. The scrapyard must have either known or suspected that something dodgy was going on.

Indeed, I had to scrap my beloved and much missed Rover 414SLi last summer and had to ring around just to find a scrappy who would take it away, most wanted to charge me for collecting it. Can't see any reason myself to steal a car and then scrap it.

What's the point in insurance if it costs you more to claim than not to in a situation like mine?

The fact that it's a legal requirement to have motor insurance does allow those companies offering it to take liberties. For many people, insurance is little more than another tax on owning a vehicle now - most people who can afford to settle without involving insurance companies will now choose to do so for fear of loosing the reductions from their NCB and facing an additional hike for claiming. Although I'm not convinced personally, I do feel that there is a definate case for arguing that insurance shouldn't be a legal requirement - the legal requirement for it seems to have allowed it to be turned into a business whose customers pay vast sums of money in exchange for little or no product.

Thing is if you get both your legs smashed in an accident and can neither walk nor work for the rest of your life you're going to be wanting a decent settlement out of it.

Indeed, but then again many insurance companies now have so many get-out clauses attached to their policy that even if you have a claim against a driver who is legally insured, then his/her insurers still may not pay you a penny.

Although I can understand in principal why motor insurance should be compulsary, in practice the compulsary nature of it has allowed it to be seriously abused by insurers who collect premiums for cover which they will very rarely have to honour.

As I said in an earlier post, on the one occasion I had cause to draw on my insurance, the cost of meeting it out of my own pocket vs the cost of using the insurance which I had paid in to for several use for just such an eventuality led to me paying it out of my own pocket because letting the insurers deal with it would cost me more.

Proper, iron hand regulation, (which this government seems to want to avoid at all costs) is required with motor insurers. If you are going to make the purchase of insurance from a commercial company a legal requirement for operating a motor vehicle, then you must ensure that that commercial company is not allowed to merely take in vast tracts of money in exchange for a product which they will never be required to deliver in all but the most serious of cases. If they won't do that, then they have to accept that there is an argument for allowing those who feel able to take the risk of having no insurance to do so.