In June 2009 I parked my wife's Saab convertible between two empty spaces in a shop car park. When I returned, the space on the Saab's driving side had been taken by a large SUV type vehicle. It was parked very close to the Saab and there were two people standing talking and wandering around by the rear of the SUV. Because the SUV was so close - and my visibility past it was non-existent - I started to reverse out extremely slowly and using all mirrors. When I had covered perhaps a couple of feet, there was a woman's cry from behind me, so I quickly drove forward again, turned off the engine and got out to see what the problem was.

I found a woman (one of the two people who had been talking by the SUV) on the ground, who said that I had hit her and that her ankle and shoulder were hurting. I had not seen or felt anything. To cut a long story short, my insurers decided that they would settle the claim lodged by this woman, despite the fact that I had not seen her behind me, that there was no evidence at all that I had actually hit her and that there were no witnesses. I wrote to the insurers saying that I would be perfectly happy to go to Court over this and that, as far as I was concerned, there was no fault on my part unless proved and that if they wished to pay then it was their decision and not mine - in fact I insisted that they did not pay.

In September we had a brief letter from the insurer's solicitor to say that they had agreed terms of a settlement. When re-insuring my wife's car today, the person I was talking to asked me about a claim that was appearing 'on the system' against my wife's name. I was baffled until this person phoned the insurers we had used in 2009 and was told that they had settled this claim for £13,723 - and recorded it as a 'fault' claim. To say that I was apoplectic is not far from the truth! Needless to say both my wife's and my car insurance has - as of today - been hiked because of this 'claim'. I would welcome your opinion on this!