Ok first some background information about me:
When I had this accident, I was studying my 2nd year of engineering at university. As part of our requirements, I need to intern for a company for 12 months between the 3rd and 4th year. Just keep this in mind for later.
So I've always been on the poorer side of the scale. My father has a car worth 500$ on the market, and ofcoarse, no insurance because we simply can't afford these extra costs, we were struggling to just get by. At one point, I needed to go get some shopping done and had an unavoidable car crash.
I was at fault because I rear ended the other vehicle. I repaired my fathers car myself by getting the damaged parts from wreckers (radiator, needed recompression ofc, bent the metal back in place, replaced bumper and hood). That cost me about what the car was worth.
I'm not going to give too many specifics on the accident, however it was a Nissan 2006 model which had about 140,000km on it. I checked the worth of the car going on gumtree and carsales at the time and it was about $5,000. This happened at the worst possible time too, I was saving up for a decent car and insurance and at the time of the crash I had reached $3,000 saved up, I offered it to him because I didn't have insurance and he rejected it. It was more than reasonable for bumper damage. It definately wasn't serious, noone was injured, police werent even called, he had to get it towed though because his back wouldn't close and I had to get mine towed because I busted my radiator. Anyway he decided to take it through insurance.
I didn't hear back from the insurance company for over a year. I figured something must have happened and I was luckily let off the hook. Now I get an email demanding $8800 wihin 14 days or else legal action will be taken. Something is very wrong to be charging that amount, that's more than 1.5x the cost of the car, I expected $3,000 max, In fact, I still have that $3,000 stored just incase this came back to bite me but there is just no way I can deal with triple that amount! Some stuff that was in this email included a flat cost for insurance expenses of $8000 (no specifics as to what was repaired, or were quotes were obtained etc), and towing which was approximately $800, the distance of towing was literally 10-20km.
Referencing back to being a student, I am now in between my 3rd and 4th year. I couldn't find any work where I was living so I had to move out and I am now getting my experience at a company paying pennies, working overtime hours WIHOUT overtime pay just so I can do my required hours. I am literally scraping on pennies (above that $3,000 mark which I had saved for the insurance) between rent, food and bills and I have no idea what to do.
Can someone shed any advice here? Is it worth looking for legal aid, simply what can I do here? I can't take out a loan because I am not earning enough and I have no assets worth even a third of what they are asking.
I'm really sorry that was long, heres a TL;DR, but please avoid giving me an answer like, you should have got insurance if you didn't read the whole thing:
Poor uni student with virtually no assets and income has a car accident and now the insurance company is demanding 8000$.
Edit with update:
Thanks all for your replies I'm going to leave an update here because I feel I owe it to you :).
I spoke with the insurance company and explained my situation, after a heated discussion and demands of what you guys listed below and several threats where exchanged (debt collector threats mostly), as well as to why they took so long (they decided to write it off, really?), we finally reached an agreement, $2500 and 190$ per week for 8 weeks. I still think its a bit much and the next 8 weeks are going to be tough but nothing I won't be able to handle hopefully and given my current situation I'd rather have it over then have to go through a long battle.
As for the letter coming by email, the original letter went to my original address (to my father), I had to look at the email one.
Now for the collision, the reason it was unavoidable was the driver I rear ended had unsafely lane switched into my lane, I looked up at my back mirror for a split second after the lane switch and when I looked forward noticed he was right infront of my face. The driver infront of him had decided to turn into a turning lane in the last second which was full, so he came to a full stop. I was at fault because he had already completed the lane transfer and there was no way to prove what he did (perhaps a dash cam would have yielded a different result). My car was lower than his so I took slightly more damage and the radiator line got punctured. His bumper got pushed in and slightly nudged the loop which locks his boot in, nothing a hit with a hammer couldn't straighten back.
Having said that I never exactly admitted fault, we both took each others details, the day after that I got a call from the insurance company and they were saying I was at fault and I stupidly said without thinking 'I'm completely broke, but how much is it going to be?", wasn't much that was exchanged after that, they were just like we'll let you know.
Case closed, if anyone has any opinions about this offer I'd still like to hear it though.
Cheers
I looked everywhere for insurance prior to the accident and the lowest I could get was about $12XX for only third party.
And no I wasn't looking at the phone.