Be Excellent To Each Other

Around 3 years ago, somebody ran into my wife on the M4, she was fine as the impact was not high speed.

Our car which was 8 years old was written off so I took the money and we bought a new one.

The only claim we made was for a hire car for the 3 weeks it all took to get sorted out, including getting a replacement car delivered.

At no point did we ever ask for or agree to any bullshit whiplash claims although our own insurance company was more that happy to help

I'm still getting creepy phone calls from people who sound like they are sat in a cellar asking me if I want to open a claim.

Where do they get this information from? Surely is should be private or fall under some sort of data protection as my phone number has been given to these wankers?

Also I can't believe I have any case to claim for this 3 years on even if I wanted to??

Did they actually have any information? I get those calls even though I wasn't in a crash.

Are they actually referencing that accident though? Or just chancing their arm? I often get calls about 'a recent car accident' I was in, despite me not having driven in years or been in an car accident ever. I used to explain to them that they'd got it wrong, but now as soon as they start their spiel, I hang up.

I blame Satsuma.

So your no claims bonus is still purrfect?

Oops *swiftly edits*

Sat to the rescue!

Welcome to the World of Insurance.

First of all, you can't claim for personal injuries after the 3rd anniversary of the accident (subject to exemptions - such as you were knocked into a coma in the accident).

Secondly, where are these telephone calls coming from? Well, you've entered the world of Data Protection, my friend. You're probably aware that in certain terms and conditions there will be a bit about using your "personal information" that you will implicitly give your consent to. Well, your data was sold to the very same people who are calling you up. As to who sold it, well, there's probably several people in the chain: Your own insurance company for starters (AXA Insurance got a slapped last year I think for selling details); then the insurers of the people who hit your car; then the repair garage and also the hire car company. Yup, somewhere along the chain you have been sold off to the highest bidder and, best of all, it's all legal!

Now the people who are calling you up are probably claims farmers. These people have purchased your data and do all the cold calling. They aren't lawyers and they aren't regulated by the SRA so they don't know shit about personal injury claims. They are leeches. If you say "Yeah, let's make a claim" they will sell your claim again - but this time to a Claims Management Company who will do your claim for a % of any compensation you recover or a firm of solicitors who will also do the claim.

It's actually banned for a solicitor to buy your case for a "referral fee" since 2013 but the rules that were implemented are so piss poor that solicitors and the Claims Management Companies that sell leads to solicitors rebranded the payments as "introduction fees" or "marketing fees". As long as the solicitors pay a fee that isn't determined "per case" then they should be fine. So you still have companies and Claims Management Companies existing to do nothing more than sell your details (they don't add to the process or even get involved) because fuck you.

There are rules relating to cold calling but, thanks to this Tory government, they had the opportunity recently to ban cold calling for personal injury claims but decided that it wasn't worth their time. They're more interested and determined with taking lawyers out of the process because we actually help people and the government couldn't give two shits about access to justice.

So what can you do? Well, take a note of the telephone number, times they call you, who it is, where they say that they are calling from and how irritated you were and complain to the Information Commissioners Office ('ICO'). ICO actually prosecuted a claims farmers fairly recently and issued a big old fine after the claims farmer had made millions of irritating cold calls and often to the same people more than once because they refused to take peoples details off their database. Turned out, that fine was worth more than the business was worth and they won't see any of that money.

More practically, just block the telephone numbers that come through. You'll be blocking for a while but keep at it.

I hope that helps, which of course it won't. Also, if you have a claim, instruct a solicitor direct - don't go through insurance or claims farmers, or any of the ones on the TV that set up claims factories, get someone who knows what they're doing. Like me!

Thanks for the info, I was blocking numbers but have just got a new phone, did a restore from backup to set the new one up but guess the blocked calls don't come over!