Hail hit your car or camper at an Italian campsite

A summer hailstorm on the Adriatic coast or around the lakes can damage every vehicle on a campsite in ten minutes. What happens next is not one claim but several hundred separate ones — and yours moves at the speed of your own documentation.

Photograph it before you do anything else

Hail is settled by counting dents, panel by panel. That count is only possible from photographs taken in the right light: early morning or late afternoon, with the light falling across the panel rather than onto it. At midday, in flat light, a hail-damaged bonnet photographs as undamaged.

Include the roof. It takes the worst of any hailstorm and it is the surface nobody photographs, because nobody can see it from the ground. Use a ladder, a step or the vehicle next to you.

On a camper, the roof is also the part where hail does damage that is not a dent: the gelcoat of a GRP roof can craze without deforming, and those hairline cracks become water ingress months later. Photograph rooflights, vents, air conditioning housings and solar panels individually.

The queue problem

After a mass hail event, every workshop and every assessor in the region is booked out for weeks. That queue does not have to be your problem: what fixes your claim in place is the documentation made on the day, not an appointment three weeks later.

Do not have the vehicle washed or repaired before it is assessed, and do not accept an on-the-spot repair offer from anyone who turns up at the campsite. Paintless dent removal done badly is not reversible.

Before you drive home

Check that the vehicle is watertight. A broken rooflight or a cracked roof skin has to be covered properly before you set off — rain on the drive home turns one claim into two, and water in a sandwich wall is a far more expensive problem than dents.

Send us the photographs on WhatsApp. Preliminary opinion the same day, including whether the vehicle can travel as it is.

Frequently asked questions

Everyone on the site was damaged. Should I wait and see what the others do?

No. Settlement is per vehicle and per policy, and there is no collective outcome to join. The claims that move first are the ones documented first.

The dents are small. Is it worth it?

Often yes, particularly on a camper or a newer car, because the number of affected panels matters more than the depth of any single dent. Send photographs and we will tell you honestly whether a report is worth commissioning.

Can I have it repaired at home instead of in Italy?

Yes, and that is usually what happens. Document the damage here, then repair where it suits you — the assessment is what has to happen before the repair, not the repair itself.