Posted by: Will – Priority Juggler on October 24th, 2008

Something we learnt quite quickly after setting up Arena is that, if you run a business then it seems you’re fair game and people will make up outrageous claims to try and get money out of you.  It may be down to the idea that “Well, they’re a company so they won’t bother wasting time refuting anything and they’ll just let their insurance pay up.”  Or there’s the very real fact that insurance companies tend to want to “settle” in favour of the member of the public, all other things being equal.  At Arena, we totally disagree with the “just pay out” attitude and will do what we can to make sure that spurious personal injury claims don’t get paid out as, at the end of the day, it’s a form of theft and it drives up costs for everyone, which eventually means customers.  And no one wants that!

The reason I chose to write this post up is because a good example came up where a bit of driver training saved us £10k on a claim that was about to be paid out by the insurance company.  A while back one of our drivers, “Little Mariusz”, had a small knock on the left wing of his van from a car that pulled into his lane.  There was no damage to our van and only very minor damage to the other car (see below).  The police came and said there was nothing to report and, as our van wasn’t damaged, we had no issue.  The lady driving the other car was fine and walking about for the 20 mins it took to resolve.  So far so good.

We then received a letter from our insurance agent a few weeks later saying that there was a new claim for £10k and could we please respond to it.  When we realised that it was this same incident we were scratching our heads.  What was the personal injury?  Apparently whiplash.  Impressive, given it was a sideways knock at about about 5mph.  We said that this was clearly absurd, it was not our fault and pointed out that this had been agreed, orally, at the time.  Ah, but the other driver has a witness statement, was the response.  Furthermore, on the basis of this witness statement, your insurance company wants to settle in the other driver’s favour (despite the facts at the time saying something totally different). Erm, can we at least see the witness statement first please, was our reply.

When the witness statement came through, it was from an individual who was not present at the scene (he certainly didn’t speak or make himself known to the police or Mariusz during the 20 mins Mariusz was there).  And then when we read the statement, a brilliant moment - the diagram and description above form the main part of the witness statement.  The statement suggests that the witness was standing right next to our van, which he said was in the left hand lane, and that our van pulled out and hit the car, which he said was in the right hand lane.  However, the photos taken at the scene clearly show that our van was actually on the right hand side of the car, not the left hand side, because the damage is on the right hand side of the car, not the left hand side.  So effectively, the “witness”, who claimed to be standing right next to the incident, actually managed to get his story completely the wrong way round.  One would think that if you’re going to invent a witness statement to try and get a personal injury payout, you could at least get the facts in the hokey statement correct!  Mixing up left and right is pretty basic stuff.

Clearly, in most circumstances, you won’t be so lucky to have a fake claim against you be so clearly falsified.  What to do in these circumstances?  Well, given, as mentioned above, that insurance companies will typically just “settle” unless you can prove that a claim is fake, it pays to follow a few basic steps to in the event of an accident.  Here are the simple things that we ask our drivers to do in the event of any collision (on the basis of advice from our insurers and our own additions) - every driver has a sheet with these instructions in their van at all times:

• Obtain contact, vehicle and insurance details of other driver(s).
• Obtain contact details of any witnesses.  It is important to get witnesses as otherwise fake witnesses can appear at a later date.
• Take lots of photos, of vehicles, witnesses, registrations etc. Lots! Photos don’t cost money and the one you thought might suffice might be blurry.  Take lots!
• Take the name and badge number of any police officer that attends the scene.  Even the suggestion of police involvement can cause chancers to melt away, as we’ve seen before.
• Do not admit responsibility (even if it’s your fault), especially not in writing, as you could then be liable for any subsequent damage to the vehicle in totally unrelated incidents.  Admitting responsibility can be a bit like writing a blank cheque. Just stick to the facts without expressing an opinion. Insurers will determine liability and this can vary depending on circumstances.
• Do not proceed with non-urgent repairs until permission has been granted by insurers.  An inspection of damage may be needed.

Another key is not to be British and say “no harm done, off we go” and neglect to take the above simple steps as your politeness could cost you a lot afterwards.  The above is hardly rocket science but it can save a huge amount of money, for both businesses and individuals.  A small ding on someone else’s car (their fault) could have cost us £10k and very nearly did.  This is not small beer and would undoubtedly have pushed up the insurance premium for every one of our 9 vans when our policy was up for renewal. It would have cost us thousands.  Hopefully, in the unfortunate event that you’re involved in an incident, following the same steps could save you money (and hassle) too.

PS as ever, the disclaimer is that we’re not a legal firm so don’t take the above as watertight legal advice.  They’re just our internal guidelines which we thought might be of interest. :)

Similar Posts: If you liked this post you may find our other post How to Beat Illegal Car Clamping Scammers - And Save £300 and our other posts on fraud and ne’er do wells interesting.

 

Filed under: Distribution, Ethics & Environment, Fraud, General, Operations on October 24th, 2008

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