Disgraceful really how people can blatantly lie to get money out of insurance companies.
The problem stems from shockingly poor systems, a small bump to end up costing thousands is ridiculous. Whoever is the loss adjuster for this claim is either taking a back hander from the garage or is grossly incompetent.
I take if you don't have a dash cam?
He does now data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Sadly as your finding out none of the insurance companies really care about their customers, all they want is cash from our wallets and that's it.
When it comes to a claim remember its not you versus third party, its your insurance company trying to work out the quickest and cheapest way for them to settle the claim. If it means your premium goes up next year for a 'at fault' accident but it means the matter gets resolved in weeks rather than month/going to court than so be it, they really couldn't careless what you (the customer) have to deal with.
A dash cam really is 100% vital these days, as it give you leverage against your own insurance company when they decide to do some thing silly. Its also why 'accident management' companies still exists, for all their bad press my experience with them is at least they will fight your corner if you have evidence to back up your not at fault - since the more fighting they do on your behalf the more they can charge for costs.
Its really a no-win situation for us the customers, either way your screwed, but having a dash cam and not driving like a twit (therefor not been at fault) is about the best you can do.
A £40 dashcam would have saved you so much hassle and likely an insurance claim. Likely the third party could be investigated for insurance fraud as well. Cannot understand why it isn't the first thing in someone list when they buy a car.
With no witnesses and no camera footage, and damage to the front of a car will almost certainly go against you.
he has a car with 4 cams now data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Probably mentioned this before. But I was travelling down a one way street behind a tipper truck thing when he turned left down a narrow road. The road was shut due to scaffolding.
He proceeded to reverse back into the road and into my car. It was 6am, council did not want to give me any CCTVand no witnesses were around.
The guy driving said his gaffer would ring me. He didn't, so I went through the insurance. 3 days later he rings me, claiming that I crashed into the back of his vehicle, his driver was going to claim for injury etc etc.
I said fine. Not once did I point out I had a dashcam. It took 6 months to sort the claim
Why, when I had it all on dash cam?
Because his insurance company filed a police complaint, and they wouldn't settle until he had been through the courts.
Police not interested as no one was reported to be injured at the time of the incident.
Only way to get CCTV from BP is to apply to them via their head office, then they will contact the garage in question, which to complicate things again, is franchised. The franchisee has different methods/standards than BP do.
However - since other people are likely to be in the footage, the garage are likely to refuse to release it to me or my insurance company, without the police getting involved.
BP head office quoted this in a letter to me:
Back to the start again - police aren't interested as there is no criminal element. So ultimately, the CCTV footage is never going to be released/available to me.
This makes it criminal: Fraud, crash-for-cash.
You just have to get someone to believe your side.
Do you have Legal Cover on any (other) insurance, eg. House, Life, or Mortgage/credit-card ?
Legal services will only take the case on "IF" there is a better than 50/50 chance of winning the case. At this time my insurance is awaiting the actual details of the injury claim.
Since my insurance has already decided I was 100% liable for the initial bump, I can't see anything other than a payout here once the "medical" details are sent to my insurers. Any medical report from a gp or otherwise will be very hard to dispute/disprove
Having re-read OP, third-party was driving a van, the collision was OP's offside, so van driver's blind side. Makes it understandable how collision occurred, van driver just expecting OP to give way to her, because OP had the 'view ahead'.