Q&A;: Who pays the insurance excess?

Question

A stolen car smashed into my car. The police attended and arrested the driver.

My car has repair costs, which luckily, I have comprehensive insurance with QBE. Lodging the claims, I provided the stolen car rego, and described how the crash occurred.

QBE have requested we pay the excess. This is outrageous, as i am not at fault.

Personally, I believe that QBE should be chasing the owner of the other car and get him to pay for the excess. That is why the owner has Compulsory Third Party insurance right?

What is the point of the CTP if we cannot claim against it?

Gary

Drive?s reply:

It's a pickle of a situation, and we're sorry to hear about your car.

Keep in mind there are two different types of Third Party insurance - the first is compulsory (yes, CTP), which covers injuries to people and is required when you register the car. The other is Third Party Property, which covers cars or bikes or shops or anything else that the car crashes into, up to about $20m worth of damage in most cases.

If you had comprehensive insurance on your car none of that should matter. If you can identify the at-fault driver (and you weren?t drunk, etc) most insurance companies won?t charge you (the owner of the car that was damaged) the excess, they will instead chase the at-fault driver.

That said, we?ve heard cases when the insurance company will as a matter of course charge you the excess to begin the repairs then refund it once it?s confirmed you weren?t at fault. It?s one of those ones where you?ll have to check the fine print. We had a quick look online and found this for QBE?s car insurance:

If your vehicle is damaged in a collision with another vehicle, you
will not have to pay any excess if all of the following apply:

? We agree that the other driver involved in the collision was totally at fault;
? You can give us the name and address of the other driver and the registration number of the other vehicle; and
? The other driver is not a family member.