Five Tips For The Perfect Insurance Claim

If you have a motor claim and it's not your fault, you have to keep your losses down to aid a full recovery.

People come up with all sorts of crazy excuses on their car accident report forms, like: 'To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front, I struck the pedestrian'; 'An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished!' or even 'The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.'

Sooner rather than later, these people's insurers are going to admit liability to your insurers. As the no-fault claimant, you have a responsibility to mitigate your losses. This means you must keep your uninsured losses to a minimum, or you will struggle to recover all your costs. The other insurer will do anything not to pay you!

The most contentious issue of mitigating losses is how you travel whilst your vehicle is being repaired. If you're entitled to a courtesy car and you use it then it's easy; there are no travel costs to claim for. However, if you don't want to use a courtesy car, you can't just get an expensive hire car and ask the other insurer to pick up the bill. An exception to this is if you need a better car than the courtesy cars on offer, perhaps for your job or for disability modifications.

If you're not entitled to a courtesy car, or if you go without a vehicle for a few days before the courtesy car arrives, you can claim back your reasonable travel expenses from the other party's insurer. The key word here is 'reasonable', bearing in mind you have a duty keep your losses as low as possible. Here are some points to bear in mind:

• If you have access to another vehicle, you should use that.
  
  
• If you don't have access to another vehicle, you should travel as cheaply as you can. Generally this means by bus, if possible.
  
  
• Sometimes you'll have no choice but to use a taxi, but this doesn't mean you can get taxis up and down the country, and then claim the fare back. You must have a good reason for each journey, and you must show that you had no alternative. If you can delay the journey, or use a cheaper method of transport, then you should do that.
  
  
• Finally, you can get a hire car, but insurers will scrutinise car hire closely and do their best not to pay up. Therefore you must be able to show that you needed it in order to carry on with your daily routine.
  
  
• If your vehicle is written off, you won't be able to keep claiming travel expenses and loss of use after you've received your settlement cheque. You can sometimes claim for five more days whilst the cheque clears, but that's it.

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