There must be a number of people reading this that have parked their car in a supermarket car park to do their weekly shop and returned to it to discover that the vehicle has been damaged in some way. It may be a dent in the side of your door caused by someone opening their car door or damage to the wing as another vehicle caught your car when reversing out of their space.
Try to be careful where you park your car when visiting the supermarket
You may be lucky and discover that the person responsible has waited for you to return to your car or left a note on your windscreen admitting responsibility. However, there are many occasions when the person just drives off and says nothing.
So, if this happens, what should you do?
Well, you will probably find that the supermarket has put up a sign saying that they cannot be held responsible for damage to customers’ vehicles in their car park. You could ask if they will peruse any CCTV footage of the car park to try to identify who was responsible for the damage and then you could trace the vehicle through the DVLA. If the supermarket were not prepared to help in this respect you could go to court and ask the court to instruct them to release the CCTV footage.
If you have fully comprehensive car insurance you could consider making a claim but you will need to bear in mind the cost of the repair, the excess payable and the potential impact on your cover. For instance, claiming may result in your no-claims discount being affected and you could find that your premium increases at renewal.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but, if the car park was not too full, you could have parked it further away from the entrance to the supermarket meaning that it was well away from other vehicles and possibly less likely to suffer damage.
We hope that the above is of some benefit.
