Is this the beginning of the end of our van? Part 1

So our van dream began over a year ago before we headed off backpacking South America. When we returned we spent two months designing and building our van to get it liveable, then the next six months living in it on the streets of London while finishing the build. On Sunday the 9th August we finally fitted the last poppers on our curtain and hung our second rail in the kitchen. We had drilled a hole in our wooden dust brush to hang it up and stood back and said, wow we’ve actually finished everything we planned for this build, finally! We were parked up on a street nestled between two parks down by the canals where we finally felt safe and like we had a home base while we did London life. Then three hours later someone not paying attention crashed into our home.

The impact was pretty hefty, at first I assumed our entire van was crushed, the noise from crash was so loud. But my instinct was to hop out (I was sitting in the front) and run to check on the other driver. It was a young girl, I asked if she was ok, did she need an ambulance, I kept trying to reassure her, at that moment our concern was for the other person involved, the van was secondary to us, I kept saying it was ok over and over again. As I said, we were nestled between two parks, and right outside our van people had been setting up for a party all day, there were gazebos, food, drinks music, nearly 100 guests. At this point most of them come sprinting over, it turns out the driver is a family member, and so began the carnage. Somehow we who were parked in a parked vehicle were getting blamed for this. Lots of angry family members being aggressive towards us. Shouting in my face, making accusations, being exceptionally and unnecessarily rude. When I said we were being completely reasonable and they had no reason to shout at me one of them shouted in my face “i’m not shouting though, am i shouting” I was like... you are literally shouting right now. It had descended into chaos to the point where bystanders had to come and intervene to say they needed to stop being like this to us and just swap insurance details. In the end Philly had to call the police because the family were now being verbally abusive towards the other bystanders.

One of the other bystanders pointed out that there were numerous cars parked on double yellow lines and that the driver should report that to the police (I had heard the driver say earlier that was her sisters car, parked opposite our van, but no-one else knew I had heard that) So Philly tried to take a photo of the car as the sister hopped in the seat to drive away, we were just trying to get photos of the scene for the insurance/police. At this point she revved the engine and rammed into Phillly until the point where he had to hop off her bonnet. Then everyone started shouting at him for standing in front of the car, and yet again somehow we were to blame for the situation even though she intentionally drove into him and sped away so he couldnt simply take a photograph of the scene.

The whole time we are being calm and trying to dissipate the situation, I kept checking on the other driver, at this point family members had pushed her car off the road into a carpark at the end. When I had first went to check on the driver (she was in a convertible so I could speak freely) I told her she was in shock and that it was ok it was just an accident and not to worry, she said she was having flashbacks as she had been in a crash last week and it was all coming back to her. I reassured her she safe and it was going to be ok. None of the family members know I was told this because later lots of them kept saying she just got her licence and this was her first time out in the car. I just smiled and nodded and said I understood, as I knew if I disagreed and admitted I knew the truth this was her second accident in a week I would just receive more aggressive behaviour. The police called back and as soon as we told them the car was off the road they said everything else was for the insurance claim and that they wouldn’t be coming to the scene. So at this point we decide to ring our insurance company (thankfully between one of the bystanders and the only calm family member there they managed to get our insurance details swapped) Most family members have went back to the celebrations in the park and we are sitting in our van talking to insurance, and man it was not a good conversation.

It was a Sunday evening, so we are talking to the out of hours team. We explain about the accident, the damage to the wheel etc., describe the scene. Ultimately when all his questions have been answered he says our van is a write off. I say, no it isn’t you haven’t even seen it! He said based on the description of damage his matrix is telling him its a write off, they will come collect it now to be taken to storage and then it will be scrapped. I was like I don’t think you understand the current situation. So explained to him about it being a conversion, argued with him about what classifies it as a write off. He kept saying the words “uneconomical to repair”. So I asked him what classifies as uneconomical, because if your telling me this damage is going to cost more to repair than the value of my van I’m telling you right now you are wrong. He kept saying ”it’s a mix of factors in the matrix” This conversation went on for a long time, with a lot of tears and a lot of him not being able to help or give me any real answers, all the meanwhile the family are all singing and dancing in the park outside our van, while we are trying to figure out what on earth is going to happen our home. Ultimately this guy admits if we put the claim through with him now he will have to send someone out to collect the van and put it into storage and he cant help it because he is out of hours. So we decide his option is obviously unacceptable so we will call back in the morning and sleep in the van tonight.

So we lie in bed, kept awake by the loud party and the impending doom of potentially getting our van taken away and basically count down the hours until the insurance company opens and we can talk to someone who actually knows something. Philly just keeps saying, what have we done to deserve this, we are innocent, why are we the ones that are potentially losing everything. I’m trying to stay positive externally, but internally I am feeling everything he is. These feelings of fear, injustice and deep sadness all set to the back beat of their happy music and late night party.

Monday morning comes and the drivers insurance company call me, tell me she has accepted 100% liability and they want to sort it out directly for me. So I explain everything, I tell her what our insurance company said, she is very kind understanding, supportive. First 30 minutes of that conversation I totally believe they are going to come repair my van for me, she understands it has so much love put into it, so many months, so much money, she is going to help me. I feel so relieved, then literally she says “Based on everything you have provided, it is coming up as a total loss and we will take your van to be crushed”.... I nearly vomited. I was speechless, I couldnt believe the words coming out of her mouth, she was even more heartless than my own insurance, at least they didn’t say they wanted to crush it. I was like I don’t understand you said you understood, she said “unfortunately it is a total loss on our system”. I was like what the flip does that mean!?? “Unfortunately we will take your van to storage where we will categorise it’s damage and then take it to be crushed” All in her happy upbeat voice. I want to kill her (no offense).

For the next five minutes the phone call is awkward silence with intermittent sobbing and her being less than helpful. They insist I send them photos of the damage as I keep insisting it is fixable and not a write off. They say the will categorise the damage based on my photos. I said what if I send you photos and you call it a write off, then you are going to come take our van, you cant take our van! Queue the next thirty minutes of me explaining how much more valuable our van is than the money she thinks it is. I tell her I need to know how much she thinks it is worth so I can find out the damage cost and convince you its worth saving. She said there were many factors and wouldn’t give me a straight answer about how much she thought it was worth. We leave it that I will get a call back in two hours after their engineers evaluate the damage based on photos she wants me to send and she will have a value for our van.

So I wait a few hours and call back to see if they have a price for my van, they do. It’s half of what we’ve spent on it, almost ¼ of its actual resale value. I tell this new girl I’m speaking to how absolutely unacceptable this is, I explain everything to her again, I’m so emotional at this point, I feel absolutely broken. I keep insisting we can prove all the money we’ve spent on the van, that its worth more than they say. She says there are two routes we can go down, either they can reimburse the money we’ve spent on conversion or they can match like for like prices for similar van conversions on the market. So I collate all this evidence, money spent, link similar vans for sale, send numerous photos of the inside of our van and then I call back later that day to see if they have came up with a new value (My hope being that once they acknowledge its true worth I can convince them it is economical to fix after all) Then the guy I talk to says the girl that I spoke to earlier was new to the role and she was wrong that they don’t “deal with this type of claim” I was like, what does that mean!? “It means we don’t deal with this type of claim”, yes, but what does that actually mean, what do you mean you don’t deal with it? “It means we don’t deal with this type of claim”.... I was like, look man I know this isn’t your fault but you are literally just reading a script back to me you really need to help me out here, just be straight with me what do you mean by that. “Unfortunately we don’t deal with these type of claims you will have to contact your own insurance company” I was like, just tell me, are you saying that you aren’t willing to compensate for the conversion? I just need to know what this actually means. “you will have to deal with your own insurance company” Man you need to help me out here, if my insurance company tell you they think its worth more than what you have originally told me, are you going to pay that? “I couldn’t possibly answer that, we don’t deal with these type of claims” When you say ‘deal’ do you mean pay or just that you don’t have the expertise to evaluate it. “I mean we don’t deal with these”.... I choke on my own tears, I’m silent for ages because one phone call tells me we can get increased value, the next one tells me she was wrong and they don’t “deal”, so I’m about to lose the plot at this point. I tell him i don’t want to be rude so I am going to hang up now, I hang up and tell Philly everything.

We wait to call our insurance company the next morning because at this point I’m pretty broken. The next morning the father of the driver show up at our van with a mechanic offering to fix it for us outside of insurance. We tell him insurance have said there may be chassis damage and think it’s a write off. Before the mechanic even gets down to the wheel he says “no chassis damage” and then writes a list of the parts needed to fix the wheel, steering arm, suspension etc. Tells the dad to buy these parts and he will have it back driving on the road in one day. We are a bit uncertain because we feel like it was diagnosed very quickly, but obviously we want to just get it fixed. So we agree in theory, but say wait to buy parts and let us think about it and we will call you if we are happy to go ahead outside of insurance. The dad looks me dead in the eye, “no insurance, why you say insurance, no insurance I’m paying”. I’m like, ok, I agree not to go insurance, we just need time to talk to them. He said to call them right now and cancel the claim. I said I would later, he said to do it now and he would wait, and I was like calm down I’m willing to do it, but I’m going to be put on hold for ages you know what insurance companies are like. (I’m feeling very intimidated at this point) Then the other guy that’s with the mechanic tells him to back down and let us take the time to think about it and call them later.

So Philly and I go for a walk and we talk about it. We decide obviously we just want our van fixed but we have a bad feeling about it all, and he needs to go to work the next day and doesn’t like the thought of leaving me to deal with it all on my own. So we send them a message that we are happy to go ahead with it off insurance if we can get a second opinion after from our own mechanic and if they can help with a mode of transport for Philly to get to go to work as he has already lost work that week. We think these are very reasonable requests and spend the next couple hours assuming this is all going ahead.

Well roll forward a couple of hours and we get a text message from the mother claiming she has it on good authority our van hasn’t moved from that spot in six months, implying we are lying about having to go to work and refusing to allow us to get a second opinion. So I’m furious at this point. We have been nothing but honest and kind and trusting throughout this entire process, I had even texted the daughter she checked how she was and asked the father again earlier that day. We are trying to be good people and they are accusing us of being liars. So I text her back saying our van has GPS and I can prove we have moved, we were in Ireland for three months and then have been at the beach every weekend and philly takes it to work up north nearly every day, all of which can be proven with GPS tracking and photographic evidence, so her source is clearly misinformed. To which she replies ok, we can get AA to inspect after. No apology, no nothing, I’m really distressed, and now I feel like I don’t trust them at all. So I say AA is not sufficient as they wont be able to get it up on a ramp to check for structural damage which is what our concern is.

We go visit our friend on her boat and talk about everything that is going on, my anger dissipates, and we all assume they will agree and the next day this will all be over. We head back to the van feeling better, however an hour later, three of them show up at our van furious with our simple requests. How dare we ask for a second opinion, they know we have never moved our van, Philly doesn’t have a job, maybe they think it was probably damaged to begin with. We spend a long time trying to get them to see the truth of the situation, they are not the victims of some manipulation, we are being completely transparent throughout this entire process. We can provide evidence of Philly’s work. They finally accept this and say to avoid going through insurance they agree to get a courtesy car, Philly says they are too expensive we don’t expect you to pay that I can get the train, he is trying to calm the situation and keeps saying “Peace and love man, we all want a positive outcome” he invites them to come see our van explain why we all want the same thing we just want it fixed so we can all move on, none of us want insurance because they keep saying they will take our home away. Everyone leaves all happy and smiley, we agreed to no second opinion simply because we just wanted this to be over. Everyone goes on their merry way and we think the next day their mechanic will come collect it and fix it and everything will be done. So I call insurance company tell them they want to do it outside of insurance, I told her I was a bit worried about it all and she said rather than close the claim, she would put it on hold and then once it is fixed you can call back and close the claim.

We are lying in bed, absolutely exhausted but grateful it looks like there is an end in sight. Then I get a text message... Hey Keely sorry to text so late at night. We’ve decided we wont be fixing the van anymore and i know you’ve already been in touch with insurance. If you want it will have to go through insurance.

Well we are in absolute shock, because hours before they left us knowing that if we went through insurance we would loose our home, and they with good conscious have decided to leave us with either paying to fix it ourselves or being homeless. At this point we realise we just need out of there because they know where we are and the obviously don’t want to go through insurance either or they wouldn’t have been down her strong arming us so much, so they have said this thinking we will back down. We lay there saying they couldnt get away with it, we need to get somewhere safe and then call back insurance to let them know we are going through the claim after all. But we can’t be here when they realise that because they could be down here with bats for all we know. So we lay awake for the third night in a row, only this time actually frightened for our own safety. The next morning my friend and I went to our local garage and explained everything that had happened. Our mechanic told us we could bring the van there and figure it out. So we spend the morning trying to find a recovery vehicle that can take a LWB van and that can take it immediately. We finally find one and by lunch time our van is taken somewhere safe and we call insurance company to let them know we have had it recovered as it was no longer safe on the road. I told them our mechanic is going to look at it and give a quote to fix it (at this point I believe the damage isn’t too bad because the families mechanic told us it would be fixed in a day) and they are satisfied to wait to hear back from me. I arrange for a courtesy vehicle to get us around while we wait for it to get checked over and fixed and I go pick it up.

That evening Philly and I drive our little courtesy van up to stay at my sisters awaiting to hear back from the garage. That was four days ago. There is a lot more to share, but I feel like this is blog is ridiculously long at this point and I’m super drained, so stay tuned for part 2 if you haven’t given up on this very long story already.