stolen car

lauraG1977

Hi

I live in the isle of man, which is very low crime area, having said that my car was stolen on September 16th 2008, I have fully comprehensive insurance with Westminster and I was refused the claim for repairing the car as I had locked the car and put the keys in my porch inside a desk, but as I had left a house key in the door from 11pm to allow my step daughter to get in the house as she had forgotten her key, the insurance said I had failed to safeguard my car ( apparantly this also applys if you sleep with a window open and someone gets in and steals your car keys/car).

I appealed to their decision and involved the ombudsman, who said they had 8 weeks to deal with complaint they sent an investigator twice and rang me yesterday (15th Jan 09) to say as an act of goodwill they will now pay up but dont moan or claim for car being indisposed for 5 months as they can retract the offer? My car has been in agarage as instructed by my broker to be taken there and I have had to borrow cars, also would i be entitled to a refund on insurance and can i claim for the time that i have been carless for travel expenses etc. can anyone help and no I still have not got my car back and the total repairs amount to about £1600!!

Oscar_The_Grouch

Hi there

Sorry for the trouble you have had.

Your insurance company are being unreasonable.

Ask the investigator to put their offer in writing in the form of a "final decision letter" so that you can review the position. Once they have done that, you can involve the Ombudsman again.

I presume from what you are saying that the car was recovered. If this is the case, then your claim was for either the total loss value of the car or for the cost of repairing the vehicle. Either way, as soon as they declined the claim they should have returned any keys and documents that you had provided them with and advised you to collect your car from storage. For the period between the date the claim was declined and now, at the very least, you are entitled to compensation.

I think that they are just trying to scare you in to backing down. Tell them that in your opinion, they should either accept the claim or decline it and that if they are going to decline the claim, you will want the final decision letter.

If they are going to accept the claim, you want them to agree the full "glass's guide" value for your vehicle, pay for the additional costs of transport that you have had to expend and give you a minimum of £250 in compensation for the delay and stress. Tell them that you also expect them to add 8% per-annum interest as this is the very least that the Ombudsman would require them to pay.

If they reject this offer, take them all the way to the FOS - you would win and they know it.

Ian_W

Oscar_The_Grouch wrote: »

If they reject this offer, take them all the way to the FOS - you would win and they know it.

The FOS don't cover the IOM unless the insurer is UK based do they? It has it's own Financial Services Ombudsman scheme run by their own OFT for IOM based financial services co's.

Westminster isn't an insurer I've come across so are they IOM based? I'd assume so to be able to offer RTA insurance there? Also if it is under the IOM scheme I wouldn't know how closely they mirror the UK scheme, particularly in regards to "treating customers fairly" or, in a "much smaller pond", how hand in glove they may be with financial services co's and staff. One difference I do notice between the schemes is that the IOM one is binding on BOTH parties and prohibits later court action whereas the UK one is only binding on the company.

Assuming it is the IOM ombudsman why not contact them and ask if they think the offer is fair, before you do quantify your costs in the car being off the road for 5 months. You've said " I have had to borrow cars" which wouldn't in itself suggests it's cost you anything and the idea would be to recompense for actual costs incurred because they insurer got it wrong. Note the site also says:
In exceptional cases the Adjudicator can make awards (of small sums) if you have suffered distress or inconvenience ...

I suspect the insurers refused the claim because they suspected you'd left the keys on open display in an unlocked porch, I'm not sure a UK insurer wouldn't have declined on those ground, but letting it drag on so long is pretty poor IMO.