To get a solicitor or not...

Zamboni

Guy crashed into me recently.

Gardai came and happy it was his fault.

I reported the incident to my insurance company and they have investigated it and are not accepting liability.

His insurance company are doing sweet fa.
The best I can get out of them is 'ongoing investigation'.

As I am getting no joy at this stage am considering letting a solicitor take over.
But I was just wondering what a reasonable amount of time to get an answer out of this crowd before getting the solicitor?
As it stands I am incurrung a lot of costs as I only had third party.

Beta Ray Bill

Insurance companies in this country are a disaster to deal with.
Getting a solictor is a last resort really as it may end up costing you more in the long run.

I think some legislation needs to be brought it to force insurance companies to have a claim dealt with in X ammount of time. anything over that time should result in penalties, and not cash penalties (as they would just pass this on to the customer) I'm talking about Business Penalties. IE Telling them they may only have 150,000 policies next year as opposed to the 200,000 they may have gotten this year, and then to make the knowledge public that were not capable of dealing with claim in time and that they have been penalised for it.

Pkiernan

Get an estimate for the damage.

File a claim in small claims court against his insurance company for the money.

If the case involves more than €2000 , find a solicitor, and tell him/her you wish to add his/her fees to the damages, or visit www.claims.ie .

Zamboni

Thanks.
It's well in excess of €2,000 so I've decided to get my solicitor on the case.
I'm talking to a brick wall with them so I'll let him deal with it instead.

robtri

can't just blame the insurance company, a lot of the time the insurance company is waiting on the writtien report from their insured.... I would say this is what is holding them up,
Also people change their stories once they are away from teh accident and report the circumstances differently to their insurance company, which can delay thisngs as well/
ring them and ask, have they recieved this from their client and ask about admission of liablity from their client....

Henry Ford III

I'm not sure you need a brief (liability isn't an issue). You might be well advised to employ a loss assessor to negotiate and finalise the claim however.

Fey!

Get on to your own insurance company to deal with them; IIRC, this is one of the reasons we pay them such high premiums.