So, we all have to have car insurance don’t we. Us oldens have been around the block a few times too, so we have experienced the benefits of car insurance as well as the costs!
But how things have changed. We have just had a little ding! It is very little, in fact if you didn’t know about it you would probably not notice it. But, as it was not our fault and the other person stopped, we decided to put it through the insurance. We have comprehensive and a protected no claims bonus, a hefty excess and no complimentary car while ours is off the road. Not that ours is of the road, we are still using it.
So, we claim. Over the telephone we call the claims line, and the nice lady takes all the details. We didn’t have the third parties (TP) details other than name and registration of the vehicle. Although with modern day Internet we had done a quick look up and thought we had found them, so guessed they were genuine. So after 15-20 mins our nice lady on the phone thanks us for the details and tells us someone will get back to us from their claims department ( I think that’s how it went, I was only party to our side of the call and didnt hear what was actually said)
A few days later we get a letter from an unknown company, they obviously had been instructed by our insurance company as they knew about us and our ding! So, really long story shorter, but still long; Companies, or ours at least, put the logistics of sorting out what are considered to be “Not at Fault” accidents to a third party company. Now it starts to get more complicated. This company works in wonderful ways. First they offer us an approved repairer, who will offer us credit on the excess, a vast saving to us in cash flow and also agro of reclaiming this from the TP. Then they give us a hire car which they offer us credit on, so we don’t need to find the cash. AND they give us, free of charge, an insurance policy to cover us, so that if they can’t get the excess or hire charges back off whoever they can claim the costs off, the policy pays them out so we don’t have to. Which is all well and good, but with us being used to at fault accidents and the old system, whereby you pay excesses to garages and then fight for it from the other person, its is a bit daunting to sign up to credit agreements not fully being aware of the implications. We are still only just entering this phase, the car has only just gone in today, so we still have to see how it pans out. But I now have issues with it. One of the things appears to be a higher rate of hirer charges for the car, up to £105 a day!! I can hire a car for nearly a week from Enterprise for that much!. My gripe is that we have a legal responsibility to keep claims to a reasonable level, and paying up to 5 times the price for the normal or even budget market seems a little concerning. But I am assured by my insurance company that all the costs/charges have been agreed with the ABI ( The Insurance Association for British companies!), so there shouldn’t be a problem… should there?
Anyway, just when you know its going to go wrong, it does! Following on from our story, today the hire car turned up, but it wasnt the size we had agreed. So no hire car today then! How do we pick the kids up from school then? The interesting thing about all this, is we “seem” to be railroaded into taking on this path for our claim, although we could have said no in the beginning and dealt with it like the old days. But we were receiving 3-4 emails each day advising us we hadn’t completed the forms for the hire car and the repairer scheme on offer. It did smack a bit of PPI and Double glazing high pressure sales techniques.
So keep an eye on here and we will inform you of the tribulations of the rest of the claims procedure.,
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