Insurance Woe
How long does it take to fully settle a car insurance claim where you were the totally innocent party?
1 month?
2 months?
4 months?
6 months?
No. My claim still isn’t settled a full six months after the accident. Here is a quick timeline:
August: Canadian crashes into my car, I get given a hire car, my car written off, cheque from insurance company arrives, I start shopping for a new car
September: Begin uninsured loss recovery process so that I can keep my three years no claims bonus and get my policy excess back, also buy new car
October: Third party (TP) insurance company claims that I crashed into the back of their vehicle. This is odd since the damage was to the rear of my car.
November: TP insurance company finally admits liability but dispute that there was any damage to my vehicle (note: my vehicle written off).
December: TP insurance company want to see my written off car to assess damage. Note that by now it has been scrapped by my insurance company.
January: TP insurance company demand to see the assessors report of damage to vehicle. Finally accept that they are not going to be able to see the vehicle.
February: My insurance company being really really slow.
I am going to have to start chasing this up every day. £150 isn’t a huge amount of money and at this rate I will have spent that in phone calls and time to sort it all out. However it is the principle of it all that bothers me. It really shouldn’t take over six months to sort a rear end shunt out. Secondly I don’t really want to lose my 3 years no claims bonus as that really will cost me a lot of money when I come to renew my insurance.
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February 8th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I hate to do this to you Dan.
Back in 2001, when you guys stayed at uni - and I took a year out to start trying to pay off student debt, and get some work experience - on my second day of work a lady overtook me whilst I was indicating right.
*stop here and think about this for a while*
So, I was indicating right, and she overtook me. Her excuse: “You looked like you were going to turn left, so I assumed that you had hit the wrong direction on the indicators”
This “little” issue should have been resolved with a sturdy slap, but the insurance company took 22 months - 5 personal statements (from me), a police statement (that I had to arrange) and a court appearance (That she didn’t turn up to). In the end I got £480 (for a car originally valued at £1500). I never even got a hire car.
Unfortunately I had bought a real dead beat car (A Vauxhall Cavalier - the reason why I know refuse to drive Vauxhalls) that had eaten through pretty much all of my earnings and a good chunk of the remains of my student loans.
A few weeks after the about case was settled a woman drove into me because she wasn’t wearing her glasses.
Insurance companies are a lot better now, When I wrote off my Rover (This time it was my fault) I got a cheque in 20 days. I only got a car hire for 14 days though. www.mattyinamicra.co.uk