Car accident claims – the most common form of personal injury claims there is. There’s one heck of a competitive industry for car accident claims, and there are right ways, and very wrong ways, to go about making a claim after a road accident.
So – please take this advice seriously
If you have a car accident that wasn’t your fault, it’s more than likely you have a successful claim for compensation. It’s quite easy to establish who is at fault after a road accident – so in many straight forward instances, you have a claim.
You will probably find yourself inundated with calls from insurance companies, claims companies, and even solicitors offering you their services.
My advice: STOP. Take a breather, read this, and consider your options:
Insurance Companies
Avoid dealing with them at all costs when it comes to making a personal injury claim – including your own. There are two general roads that go down the wrong route of dealing with insurers:
1. Dealing with Third Party Insurers Directly
Avoid this at all costs. If they offer you any sum of money, you should reject it. Normally, they will offer anything between £500 to £1,500. The lowest I’ve seen is £200, which is ridiculous! Accepting an amount from insurers directly leaves you almost definitely under settling your claim for compensation.
There is only one way to value a claim for compensation – with proper medical evidence and a specialist lawyer representing you. Even if the insurers offer to get you medical evidence, there is no one on your side, fighting for your rights, and protecting your position. It’s a genuine well know fact that insurers will do anything to save themselves some money – they will under settle your claim given the chance.
2. Legal Expense Insurance / Legal protection / Motor Legal Protection
This, dear readers, is the real pain behind under settled claims, poor service levels for victims, and middlemen taking their cuts from your compensation claim. Many people have the “benefit” of this on their motor policy, which apparently guarantees the victim no cost personal injury claiming.
In actual fact – all your insurers do is refer your claim over to one of their panel solicitors who will pay out a huge referral fee (sometimes up to £800 in the worst case scenarios) just to have your case.
This means that:
- A. Your insurer pockets £800 for nothing
- B. You end up with a solicitor that has wasted a huge proportion of their claims budget on buying your case.
So, what does this mean?
The solicitor that buys your case must ultimately turn over a profit. With a huge amount of money wasted on buying the claim, they have far less money to spend on you, the victim, and making sure you get the best service and the highest payout. That’s why you must always avoid the route of letting insurers refer you over to solicitors; they’re just middlemen taking a cut and having a potentially adverse effect on you and your claim.
A good way to think of it is like this:
- A. Solicitor referred through insurers: has £800 LESS to spend on you and your claim
- B. Independent Injury lawyer: has £800 MORE to spend on your claim.
The referral fees can often leave a solicitor so cash strapped that they advise clients to accept low offers and purposely do not bother to spend the time and effort in recovering all losses properly, such as lost earnings, care and assistance, medication, and treatment costs. I regularly hear complaints from victims of this rout who ask us for advice, and they all say the same things:
“My lawyer hardly ever gets in touch with me”
“I haven’t heard from my lawyer in 2 or 3 months”
“I got an offer and they told me to accept it straight away, but I know I’m entitled to more”
“My lawyer never calls me back or answers my phone calls”
“It’s been a nightmare, to be honest”
Some of these are infuriating. A solicitor that doesn’t even have the curtsey to call a client back is astounding.
So, What Should You Do?
Get your own independent specialist personal injury lawyer. With an independent injury lawyer working on a Genuine No Win No Fee basis, there are no costs to you whether you win or lose.
So, ask yourself the question: “Why am I paying for legal protection on my car insurance policy if I can claim free of charge anyway?”
My advice is to get rid of it. Here’s an example of how we work as an independent firm of specialist personal injury lawyers who promise to never waste your claim money on buying your case.
- Genuine No Win No Fee: we do not charge if you lose, and we do not charge if you win. You always keep 100% of any compensation awarded to you because our agreement restricts us from charging any fees to you; a black and white guarantee. We, under our agreement, cannot charge you. So, we won’t be subsidising our legal fees with your payout because we never waste our money on buying claims.
- High Service Levels: we update our clients every 14 days; because we can afford to. We promise to deal with any post, calls, and emails within 24 hours of receipt; because we can afford to. We promise to do more for our clients; because we can afford to do so.
- Private Treatment: we offer private medical care from the outset of your claim. You never pay a penny – even if the claim loses.
- Maximum Compensation: we promise to do everything we can to make sure you get the highest payout possible. We won’t be accepting any low offers, or missing any losses. We will fight tooth and nail to make sure your payout is maximised. Why? Because we can afford to!
My advice to you is to instruct your own in independent injury lawyer on a genuine No Win no Fee basis and avoid the insurers, claims companies, and any other middlemen waiting to take a cut from your claim.
If you want, speak to an independent firm, and then speak to a solicitor through legal expense insurance, and ask them what they offer. Compare the service and see for yourself.
Go directly to a specialist injury lawyer working on a no cost basis, and you should achieve the most satisfactory outcome with the highest possible payout. Even the Law Society has recommended that referral fees be stopped on the grounds that they have the potential to limit access to justice and reduce the quality of legal services on offer. So, don’t just take our word for it.
Protect your position and don’t listen to the insurers if they say an injury lawyer will sneakily charge you; this isn’t correct. We know this because we never charge our clients.
For more information, please feel free to get in touch.
