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Hello everybody,

I`m a german guy with a Working Holiday Visa and spent the last 9 month in your beautiful country travelling and working, meeting beautiful people and visiting the most amazing landscapes i`ve ever seen. Now i could use your advice, as i`m pretty new to your country and have no idea how the system works over here.

However, i was about to sell my car, as im leaving the country on the 18th of June, and a man loses yesterday his trailer wich ends up at the back of my car leaving some paneldamage :-(
He calls me straight away, as my number was on the big FOR SALE sign in the car, leaves me a message on my voicebox that he hit my car. i call him back, he explains, i have a look at my car,his businesscard with his name i find under the windscreen viper.
Haven`t got until now any insurance details and the accident AFAIK happens with companyproperty ( a quite big worldwide company)

today, i got a quote from a Panelbeater for 2400$ to fix the damage, but the car will not be worth that much anymore. ( Subaru Legacy LX 1996 2wd automatic, 1,8l engine, 224k)

i`ve got pretty much two and a half weeks left to sort out the whole situation and would like to know:

What are the usual steps i should take in a case like this?

Can i still sell my car? and claim money from the insurance?

I would have a buyer who is not bothered about the damage, as the car is still drivable. He wants to have the car for the long weekend.

Also the guy who crashed into my car said that, if the insurance pays me the marketvalue of the car, the insurance keeps the car. Is that possible?

Fact is to me that my property got damaged and I`m a quite a bit puzzled what to do & how to get everything sorted out before i leave.

Any advice would be very appreciated.

Cheers Csaba

Hello Csaba,
At least the person responsible had the decency to leave his contact details.
Unfortunately, as you are short of time, your options may be limited. If you wish to claim through insurance, it is very likely that the insurance company will want to pay you out and keep the car. Under these circumstances, they will then de-register the car so you are unable to sell it.
One possible option for you is that if the damage is only superficial and you have a buyer, you may be able to negotiate with the person responsible for the damage to pay you the difference between the price you would have got for the car prior to the damage and the price you have now been offered. If this is only a matter of a couple of hundred dollars, it may be in the other persons best interest to agree to this, as they probably have an insurance excess that amounts to more than the difference, and perhaps the claim could affect their no-claims bonus too.
Otherwise, you really have no option but to deal with the insurance company and see if there are any other suggestions they can offer.

thanks bayliss for your quick reply.

seems like i`m just going to wait until they write the car off. i guess they don`t really need me for that and it would be sufficient to have a friend where i can leave the car and let the insurance know where they can find the car. i still got 5 month warrant & rego so there shouldnt be a problem with parking the car on the street?

do you think that would be sufficient ( for the worst case scenario)?

and i tried to get hold to the guy who caused the accident but he doesnt answer his phone and his coworkers at the office won`t give me any information, they just keep on telling me that i should call him.
now, i`m a bit afraid that the guys from the company just trying to let the time pass until i`m gone and then forget about the whole thing, as nothing happened.

To make the whole situation official i just needed to talk to the police i guess?

Cheers csaba

You can report the incident to the Police, but they have no power to make the guy pay up. You need to get onto the insurance company to see if they can speed up the process.

got a call this morning from the insurance. so everything seems to go its way from here on...

thanks for the reply anyway