Paint Spillage & Insurance Claims

So here's how it works... you call your insurance company first and explain to them what's happened. And explain that if you can you would like to deal with it yourself. But if possible, if you need them, you want to call them. In our experience, most insurance companies are happy to do this, we haven't had any that have objected to this. From their point of view, they do want you to deal with it if you can, they don't want you to make a claim if you can help it. What that means is that you can bring the car to us, we can do a couple of hours on it, sometimes it might only be an hour, we can then decide or not if it's only going to be another half an hour to finish it, or it's worse than we thought, and the likelihood is that seats and carpets need to come out. In that instance you can call the insurance company back and say, I called earlier, have a look on your system, I'd like to make a claim now because it's turned out worse than I thought. So you have covered both bases then. If you feel it's something you don't need to claim then, you can pay for it yourself. If it looks worse than it it, then you can call the insurance company and they they would send an assessor out, they have a look and decide what they are going to do. In most instances they will just have it done.

If you are going to make a claim on the insurance, what usually happens is you call the insurance company and as you are talking to the operator they are typing in your detail and putting in what has happened, and that goes onto their system. In most instances that will trigger the body shop system, What they will then do is send a vehicle out, often a truck with a hire car on it or they will come and collect it. The problem with them telling your car away is that the paint is drying, And because it's not a standard job they need to send out an assessor, by the time her gets their it's dry. We do cars direct from insurance companies, because if there is paint on leather it can be got off even if it has dried, which saves replacing expensive parts. But once it dries it all becomes more expensive because carpets and things will need replacing, and it can then can end up being quite a big job, we have done several that have ended up one to two thousand pounds. So this will be going down on your record as a claim, and next year when you are doing your renewals, then obviously you have had a claim. They want to know if it's been an expensive claim or not because they are insuring you for the following year.

Sometimes a carpet, or some of these plastic parts inside of cars are not kept for the dealers, because they are not regular replacement parts. If it's a headlight of back light cluster then usually they are easy to get because the dealer with have them in stock or can get them overnight. But if it's a parcel shelf or a carpet section, sometimes these things need to be ordered, and sometimes they can be on back order and take quite a long time to get. We have been waiting for parts for as long as six weeks before when they have to be replaced.