Howdy everyone,
I am not a happy bunny at the moment. I was attending an offsite business meeting yesterday at Norwoodhall and as I was reverse parking my front bumper was ripped off - not pleased!
As you come up towards the hotel you drive up a tarmac'd driveway from the main road. As you approach the carpark areas you have to drive off the tarmac and into gravel parking bays defined by cut down logs. In doing so you drive over a small concrete divider which stops the gravel from getting onto the main driveway. The space that I attempted to reverse into had a big (5" +) dip on the other side which I could not see.
So once my front passenger wheel had cleared the concrete divider I was greeted by a huge bang and scraping noise. Needless to say I shat myself, stopped immediately and went round to check the front of my car......
To find the front passenger side of the bumper ripped off and at 90degs to the front wing - still stuck on the concrete lip. So I drove off it and back up onto the tarmac driveway - sourced another parking bay and inspected the damage. At this point I am absolutely fuming.
I realise this thread is useless without pictures so (please excuse the poor quality the pics are from my iPhone): -
This is the concrete lip in question - you can clearly see a chunk taken out of the top and the white scrape where my car ended up.
This is the hole that greeted and ended my front bumper - the hole is about 5" deep and I used my car keys to give it some scale.
As you can see here the dip onto the gravel parking bays is not consistent. I was unaware of the big dip as my rear wheels never encoutered it due to the angle I reversed into the space.
So it ripped my front bumper skin off to 90degs. It pinged back some of the way once I had driven back off the lip. But as you can see it nolonger aligns.
This also snapped my carbon splitter in to and broke the retaining tabs on the foglight covers.
Close up of splitter. Totally minced...
I had to make some DIY repairs to keep the bumper in place as after the meeting I was going to pick up my wife and 4-1/2 month old daughter.
So I calmed myself down and went into the hotel to complain. My details were taken and I was informed the General Manager was on duty until 7pm and that she would still be there after my meeting had finished at 5.30pm. So meeting finishes and the GM has gone home - but left me a message to say they (Norwoodhall) don't accept any responsibility for damage occurring in the carpark. And she left here 20year old duty manager to inform me.
I don't see why I should have to claim this damage on my insurance - my understanding is that as it is private land they have a "duty of care" to maintain their carpark to an acceptable level that does not cause damage to patron's cars. Can you imagine the damage that would have been caused to a Porsche?? So I popped into Kinghorn this morning to have a quote prepared. Thankfully the bumper skin is not damaged and they even managed to reposition the skin back on for me on the spot. However, I need a new splitter (Chargespeed CF Bottomline Type 2 - £475 supplied from SRB), arch liners, liner undertray and bumper guides + fitment. Thankfully I don't need a new bumper, washers or headlights. So it is going to be a hefty bill.
I get a call back from a very unhelpful GM this morning at 10.30am approx and get the company line that they do not accept any reponsibility and that I should phone my insurance company.
Does anyone have any legal background that they can share? Does the hotel have a responsibility under law to maintain their carpark appropriately? Any help is greatly appreciated.
I am so flippin angry.............
Dave
