Rewind about a month.
I live at the entrance to a building site so basically there are lots of lorries dropping stuff off and picking mud up.
It's a fairly narrow road and gets a bit busy and is a T junction.
My wife returns home in the car having dropped my son to college, it's just before 9am and there is an arctic parked across the drive and along the front of my house waiting to make a delivery to the building site.
As my wife can't get on the drive she parks about 20 feet behind the lorry and the driver acknowledges her as she returns inside the house.
She just has a bad feeling about the lorry and keeps a close eye and when he starts up his engine she returned to the front window to see him reverse back and straight into my car!
She rushed out shouting for him to stop which he did and basically the lorry has pinned the car against the kerb. The both took photos and the driver suggested my wife drove up onto the kerb so he could move the lorry.
So then the driver starts reversing again so he can make the swing into the building site - straight into the bumper of the car behind!
Once again my wife shouted for him to stop and told him he'd just hit another car. The driver swore (then I think apologised for his language) and wrote down his company details and his bosses phone number on bits of paper, they took more photos and by now the site foreman was there after a neighbour went and got him, and the lorry went off into the site.
As my wife was in shock she didn't phone the guys boss but waited for me to get home and was in a bit of a state so her story is a bit of a muddle.
I phoned the guys boss, he was a bit rude and dismissive rather than apologetic and said he'd pay for the damage directly over the phone to a bodyshop.
The damage to the car initially just appeared to be a scored and scraped front bumper and mirror (which had been pushed flat to the car) but on investigation it was more obvious that the front wing had been pushed in slightly hence the bumper coming off its mountings and ripping the inner arch where it's bolted through.
So once I had a bit of time the following week I approached a few local bodyshops but they said it would be pretty expensive to fix and I'd be better off making an insurance claim. So I headed to a place a friend recommended out of town a bit and they quoted £580 to fix all in which is a fair bit of cash I guess but that doesn't get you much in bodyshop repairs.
The bodyshop tried to ring the guy but he denied knowing what they were talking about so I phoned him.
He said that was far too much money and asked me to get them to email him the quote.
After not having heard from him for over another week I phoned him asking him what he was prepared to do and as ever he was straight on the negative saying there was no way his artic would have done that damage to my car "as it was empty" to which I replied that even an empty artic weighs an awful lot and puts out masses of torque and was driven straight into my car by his negligent driver reversing blind side on a public road with no banksman.
"He was doing 5mph at the most not 20 mph so wouldn't damage your car, you're just ringing up making false accusations" was his reply!
At that point I was incredulous and asked him for his insurance details to which he initially declined and asked me to put it in writing. I stated if he didn't supply them to me the next call was to the police. He said he would deny everything and he then read out the details with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure and I thanked him and hung up as at that point I just really wanted to be as far away as possible from his school bully attitude.
Now, I'm reluctant to put it through my insurers as it's an old car and if it goes to a bodyshop of their choice it would be written off for the pretty limited damage as they'd quote far more repairs than the small bodyshop said they'd tidy it up with. Plus there's the danger it will be my word against his.
If he'd had apologised and been polite I'd have split the bill with him possibly but alas he was rude and irritable and although I have a massive understanding of hauliers all my sympathies with him vanished.
So, basically I'll go through my insurers as a last resort and thankfully I have quite an extensive knowledge of transport law so I'll get them to ask some quite sticky questions as I know the logistics guy didn't stick to procedures that might upset his insurance company but he's arrogant enough to bluff and bully his way through.
What would my other options be?
