Hello John, Got a new Motor?
Right, I’m not tight but I really don’t like waste, so I thought I’d share the story about my car.
My Mother-in-law worked for one of the UK’s largest insurers for over 20 years, and never had a motor claim in her life, until a couple of months ago when she unfortunately managed to reverse into my car parked on the drive.
Having got a £500 quote to have it fixed we decided we’d better claim on her insurance and my car was duely picked up on a transporter and taken to get fixed.
The insurers gave me a courtesy car - a Vauxhall Vecra which was quite sporty and proved suitable for rallying round the Warwickshire countryside (within the speed limits of course!). Following a previous excellent experience with a car repair I had foolishly assumed that it would be taken on a Tuesday, assessed on a Wednesday, Fixed on Thursday / Friday and returned to me within a week. Not quite….
I began to miss my car , not least the hands free car kit which made talking whilst driving a legal activity! After two weeks I phoned the garage only to find that the insurance company had not even visited to assess and authorize the repair.
After a bit of a rant to the insurers I asked for a like-for-like car to be delivered, and they sent me a saab convertible, and the sporty areo version at that! I’ve had the Saab for 10 days in the UK’s heatwave, and as far as I’m concerned the insurers can keep my car until Autumn!
But the point of the story is that a minor dent (costing £500 to fix) has so far cost the insurance company around £2,000 in delivery/hire charges, and this is growing by the day. An efficient organisation would only have taken my car into the garage when they knew it could be assessed, and have a provisional slot booked in to fix it. An efficient operation would have had my car back with me inside a week.
Inneficiency like this just pushes up our car insurance premiums. I note that this UK plc insurer has a pension scheme defecit of £126m, and has recently closed off it’s final salary pension scheme. Perhaps if they focused on profitable operations they may be able to pay my mother-in-law the increased pension she needs when she has to pay her higher car insurance premium!
So far it’s been three weeks and counting…..