It is annoying when things happen but they do - never the less it's only a car and repairable. In my instance the other half fell in love with the local bus that was parked picking up passengers in 2010 and scraped from the B pillar all the way to the rear bumper.
I claimed as there was no way I was going to pay for that, you will incur it on your insurance. A couple of points to let you know about...
1. Don't pick your insurance companies approved repairer take it to someone you know and trust. Approved repairers are generally crap, the reason being is they get paid half of what a general repairer get paid under agreements with insurance companies and will not take care an attention over the vehicle. You will regret it. In my instance I needed the car repaired and for the first time in my life I didn't follow my own advice, it took a year for the car to be repaired correctly.
(Not to deviate too much but when they first repaired it it was appalling - an independent engineer was sent by the insurance company to assess and demanded it be reinstated in it's original state - too much filler was used, paint wasn't correctly applied, didn't replace things correctly - won't go on with the rest but they did manage to damage in door card also and get welding sparks in the window)
2. Make sure you take pictures and don't settle on repair for things that will not match (insurance companies only want to basically repair the car and reduce there exposure)
3. If there is a third party involved they will be claiming on your policy anyway so it will effect you regardless if you make a claim or not, and also if you don't claim on your policy you will have to declare the incident on your next insurance policy, if you don't then your policy will be null and void (and trust me as many people as I have seen get away without declaring I have also seen as many get a policy terminated which then makes it incredible hard to get insurance because it is that magical question - Have you ever had insurance refused, terminated or declined!)
4. If you have gone to the approved repairer or anyone for that matter, make sure you go over the car when you collect it and they have done what they are supposed to do (with me the merely repainted the bumper even though the screw was broken and couldn't fit back again correctly, pushed it back in place). So I had it replaced again from them
oh dear more cost and the poor insurance company thought they could do it on the cheap...lol
Anyway, premiums will rise regardless, but I will say this - If the claim costs around £3k which it will do if not more (mine was £2990 excluding the return which was another £3250 - they paid dearly
)
It has cost us another £100 last year and £40 this year in an increased premium - in your instance if you don't have NCBP then it will be slightly higher, but even if it adds around £250 per year to your premium, that is still better than repairing it yourself because you will still have an increase to your premium as you have to add the incident to your policy next year.
The only time it is worth doing it yourself is when it costs less than £500, as insurance companies place more emphasis on if you had an accident rather than the overall cost (though this is taken into account it is not the over aching consideration).
Hope this helps and I didn't waffle too much
