‘Tis the season to be jolly‘! With less than 3 weeks until Christmas, the decs are up and the presents are (probably) bought and we are all feeling a little cash strapped for the rest of the festive season. This is the perfect opportunity for insurance companies to save themselves a great deal of money; at your expense!
Here at The Injury Lawyers, we call it Pre Medical Offer Season. Basically, as the insurers know we are all in need of a little extra cash over the festive period, they go mad for making pre medical offers to people in the hope to settle the claim for a potentially low sum by feeding on the need people have for more money during the Christmas period. They do it when you have a lawyer, or even without.
You will be offered something like £1,000 to settle the claim now. They’ll promise you a cheque within days, and hopefully it can clear before it’s too late to hit the shops for Christmas or the January sales. It’s extremely tempting to anyone. The trade off though is that you may be under settling your claim. The only way we can properly value your claim for compensation is with proper solid medical evidence. If you don’t have medical evidence, no one can properly value your claim. A pre medical offer is an offer to settle the claim in full and final in the absence of medical evidence. So it’s a literal shot in the dark so to speak.
A lot of people fall foul of this technique at any time, but in the run up to Christmas, a grand in your hand is just way too tempting than having to wait a few months to properly settle the claim. But, like I say the trade off is that you are likely going to get less money by accepting a pre medical offer. The insurers know this; and especially know this in the run up to Christmas.
Here’s an example: John Smith is offered £1,000 by the insurers directly for his whiplash claim. Its 3 weeks until Christmas – he has seen a nice necklace for Mrs. Smith, his eldest son wants a new mountain bike, and his daughter is crazy for fashion toys and accessories. £1,000 would so easily cover all of those wonderful things he can buy for his family, and have more than enough left over to go upmarket on the Christmas turkey.
Fast-forward to January – John has a happy family, and the Christmas period is over. But he is still in pain.
Fast forward to March – John is still in pain and his work is now been effected. He can’t put the hours in due to the pain from the whiplash injury that’s ongoing and he has sacrificed a lot of overtime as a result. He is on a waiting list of 12 weeks for physiotherapy from the NHS.
His injury is now costing him serious money.
Fast forward to July – 6 months on, and John is still suffering. The physio helped but he was discharged after 8 weeks as there was nothing more the NHS could do for him. He still gets pains that slow him down at work, and going to the gym has been a problem ever since. He still can’t do the overtime at work and his performance is being reviewed as he isn’t as fast as he used to be.
Let’s say John is paid £200 in overtime a month. 6 months without overtime has now cost him £1,200. So he has actually LOST money by settling the claim directly for £1,000 prematurely without medical evidence. Had he have made a proper claim, he would have got £1,000 for just a 4 – 6 week injury. For an injury lasting 6 months, his payout would have increased to reflect this. He could have made a claim for lost earnings due to the overtime being sacrificed and claimed back the full £1,200 he had lost as a result.
In fact, John’s claim, with medical evidence and a proper lawyer, would probably have settled in the region of around £2,000 – £3,000 at least. He could have had 3 times more compensation had he have waited and done things the proper way. That would have paid for a nice holiday abroad; never mind a few extra Christmas gifts! On top of that, he could have got private physiotherapy as part of the case and enjoyed much better treatment.
All he had to do was wait…
So you could end up losing thousands of pounds by under settling your claim in Pre Medical Offer Season, and you could end up suffering for longer without private medical care. The insurers have saved themselves thousands of pounds in compensation and lawyers fees – so you can see they weren’t offering you a grand in your hand for your benefit! It’s for theirs!
There are of course those who may try and be tactical about this. Perhaps try and barter for more, or ring an injury lawyer to ask if their offer is any good. All we can say is that without proper medical evidence and a good lawyer to represent you for your claim, you are in danger of losing potentially thousands of pounds. Ultimately you could end up suffering for years and have all sorts of problems for the rest of your life; you just never know. Settling pre medical is playing with fire because you can never guarantee what is going to happen in the future. You could sit there and say “well I’m sure that won’t happen to me” – but how do you know? I’m sure most people who are seriously injured never that it would happen to them.
The choice is yours.
