Rear ended

[Pgm]

Not sure where to put this but today I was rear ended when I stopped at a junction me and bike ended up in a pile in the middle of the road.
I’m ok ish and the bike obviously taken a smack in the rear seems to have gotten off fairly lightly and was able to ride it home.
About 4 years ago I had a bike written off all sorted by 4th dimension or 5th not sure lol, I wasn’t particularly happy with how it was dealt with all in house and what seemed like grabbing as much as they could for themselves, so this time can I refuse 4th-5th dimension the job of sorting things ?
do I have options?
I’d rather take it somewhere I trust get a quote and send them the bill.
Cheers.

[Rockburner]

That's shit.

I've had it happen to me and it's extremely unpleasant.

No idea who 4th dimension are, and not sure on insurance stuff any more.

Hope you can get it sorted to your satisfaction.

[Skub]

Glad you wen't injured Pgm. It happened me too,years ago. A car load of Chinese folk who all suddenly lost the ability to speak any English. Must have been the shock.

[MyLittleStudPony]

Re. who handles the claim, I am pretty certain you can decide who repairs and how.

My car was run into a few years back the the other driver's insurance very subtly transferred me to a claims handling company who I quickly realised were going to bump up the claim as much as they could and do a shitty paint and filler repair.

I stopped them and took control of the process myself. I insisted on all new Jaguar parts fitted by a Jaguar garage. And a comparable hire car while it was being done.

Once I spoke to someone fairly senior at the third party's insurance company they were very happy for me to do this as it meant a lower value claim for them.

It did take quite a few phone calls to sort it all out but well worth it IMO.

[Trinity765]

Glad you're ok Pgm.

[Pgm]

Thanks all, I’ll push to get it repaired by someone I trust and see how that goes.

[dern]

4th Dimension handled the claim on the behalf of the insurers on my Aprilia when it was rear ended a couple of months ago. They worked on the basis that the claim would be against the 3rd party due to the nature of the accident. They took the bike away and inspected it. The engineer who inspected the bike called me up and talked me through their process. He said that they only fit new parts to repair the bike and will work forward from the point of impact working out what needs to be replaced. In my case the subframe, rear bodywork, exhaust, tyre, wheel bearings (these are replaced as a matter of course with an impact on the wheel) and the swingarm were all damaged and/or bent. At the point the costs exceeded the value of the bike taking in to account the labour as they wrote it off as being uneconomical to repair. I could have bought it at that point but the engineer had stopped before checking the chassis, engine mounts and the exhaust downpipes and connections to the head. He also said that the alignment of the forks was out so some force must have been transmitted through the bike. From this information I decided not to buy it and let them continue with the claim.

The 3rd party didn't admit liability so I was given the choice to either let 4th Dimension continue to push for this or, if I wanted an earlier settlement, we would pass the case to the underwriters. I did the latter.

The underwriters then picked up the bike, made sure that they were happy with the findings of 4th Dimension (they were) and got a number of settlement figures. The offered the middle one but I asked for more so they gave me the upper one which I was happy with. The bike was given to a dismantlers and I record the bike as written off and signed over the bike to the dismantlers. The underwriters sent me the money, minus the excess, and they will continue to pursue the third party.

This has all taken 2 months.

The advice I'd give is that you'll have to report the accident anyway and you should check your options carefully. Let's say the repairers change something, decide that they need to change something else and this process continues until they're happy that the bike is straight and safe. How will you manage this with the 3rd party? How will you cope if the costs mount to a point where the 3rd party starts to complain? I'm not trying to dissuade you, it's just that I didn't think there was much wrong with my bike either. I thought it probably just needed a subframe and an end can. The 3rd party wanted to give me a couple of hundred quid and leave it at that. The final settlement for the bike was £6700.

[Pgm]

Hi dern I get what you’re saying and it’s all in the hands of the insurers I’m waiting for them to contact me Monday.
I did ride it home and to me it rode fine but I definitely want it looked at properly, it’s just that after my dealings with 4th dimension 4 years ago with a non fault claim I don’t want them dealing with it this time.

[asmethurst99]

Don’t want to clog the thread - I was reversed into and ended up with a broken mudguard - my insurer's seem to end up rinsing the other parties insurers for bike storage bike hire etc to the extent they wanted to write off the bike - I said no and they repaired it but I always started any conversation with them confirming I was not at fault.
4th dimension did the work - they were fine - lots of phone calls etc.
Glad you’re ok