HPi checks...waste of money - what's the point!!!

little_miss_thrifty

Hi, sorry if this is in the wrong section, didn't quite know where to put it.

I am writing (sorry for the length of it) to seek wisdom and a helping hand in the nature of HPi and Insurance reports. I am hoping that even if nobody has an answer for me, i may be pointed in the right direction....Let me explain.

In November 2003 we privately bought a Vauxhall Astra with slight rear quarter damage which we repaired (we are a small family garage). We used it for a few months until a customer of the garage purchased it from us PRIVATELY in Feb 2004. The day we bought the car we Hpi checked it and the day before the customer bought it we Hpi checked it and both times it reported clear.

A whole year passed until at the end of Feb 2005 the customer came into the garage ranting and raving saying the car had just been Hpi checked as he had wanted to trade the Astra in for a newer car and the company had told him the car was now a Catergory D repair. After 2 reports of being clear, this came as a shock to all of us. We told him initially it was nothing to do with us as he had bought it from us the year before in a private sale and we had nothing to do with insurance reports anyway (he accused us of changing the HPi), but he didn't want to be rational and the fact that he lived in the same village as our business is situated and we didn't want bad publicity tied to it, we bought the car back off him for over £3000 (y reg) as a goodwill gesture (NOW in debt!!!)
After making numerous phone calls to lots of companies, we found out that the car had had the accident in June 2003. The Astra was insured under a company called Fujitsu and it was hit by another car that was insured by Endsleigh. I spoke to Endsleigh who confirmed the policy/claim and also confirmed that the Astra was never their car.

The questions are:
The latest HPi report stated that the engineer's report from Endsleigh had been submitted in August 2004 to put the car as a Cat D...14 months after the initial accident/claim.
- Surely it cannot be right that a car can be released for resale when all the paperwork has not been finalised?
- Are insurance companies who have never insured the car allowed to categorise a damaged vehicle? (i have been told they cannot do this)
- Why did it take so long for this to be dealt with? Are insurance companies allowed to drag their heels for over a year before finishing off a claim?
- WHAT IS THE POINT OF PAYING FOR A HPI CHECK IF AT THE END OF THE DAY IT IS PROVIDING YOU WITH FALSE INFORMATION???? We may as well not bother checking a vehicle's history if it is going to be changed at a later date!
*******CHECK YOUR CAR************

We certainly wouldn't have bought the car in the first place if we knew if was going to be classed a Cat D. We would like to chase someone for compensation...but who?

This unfortunately is not the first time HPi has been useless to us....
We bought a damaged Maserati 3200GT 2001 in 2003 knowing it was a Cat D this time! Unfortunately 3 months ago hubby had an accident in it (was fine) and it was written off and was offered £**K in settlement (still waiting). 48 hrs later, insurance comp phone informing us that on their records they had previously written car off in 2001 (when car was 6 months old) and had classed it a Cat C. This did not show up on our HPi report when we were first looking as it, thus we ended up buying a car that had one knowingly been written off (cat D) and once UNKNOWINGLY written off (Cat C). They then changed their settlement offer, knocking off £2000 because of what they called hidden information (THEIR hidden info!!) Hpi said they were not informed of Cat C, insurance comp said they HAD told HPi.....WHAT HOPE HAVE THE PUBLIC GOT!?!?!?!?:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

HELP..We are sick and tired of loosing money!

Many thanks in advance, LMT

balsingh

Doesnt the HPI check include some kind of indemnity where if the info they give is incorrect, you can claim up to £10000 from them??? I'm sure they used to make a big deal about it when you asked for the check.

Astaroth

albertross wrote:

The insurance company should do the checks before they insure it.. not reduce the value after you have an accident.

Do you know how much MIAFTR licences cost to check every vehicle?

Plus almost all insurers insure it as "market value" these days so unless they inspect every vehicle, do full MAIFTR checks etc then there will always be uncertainty on the valuation of the vehicle until a loss has occured... do you want to pay an extra £200 a year on your car insurance to know the total loss value for certain?

Any insurance company that writes off a vehicle has to log the total loss to MIAFTR even if they are not the insurers of that vehicle (I know as we got in trouble as we werent doing it). I am not aware if there is any timescales in which the logging must be made.

The problem with these can be the fact that an engineer inspects the vehicle and confirms it is a total loss, its settlement figure and salvage catagory before liability is established. All sides then agree the figures on a without prejudice basis but as the third party insurer hasnt yet accepted liability they havent yet written the car off and so dont have to put it on MIAFTR but the third party is now free to get rid of the vehicle. Up to 6 years (or longer) later liability is finally established and then the third party insurer (if found liable) would have to write it off and load the total loss to the database.

little_miss_thrifty

albertross wrote:

if hpi can do it for £30 and make a profit, then the insurance industry could do it for less.. and at the same time make sure that all cars on the road are legal, not stolen at the point they are insured. If someone dies in an accident because the car was a cut and shut, then they will have to pay out loads of money, so it is in their interest and ours to offer this service.

We are in 2006, we have computers, the data may be all over the shop, but there is no reason why the DVLA and car sales and insurance industry can come up with a foolproof and cheap system to know the history, approx true mileage,

Hoorah!! Thank you! Can't see why it is so hard not to have a central database, or for DVLA to be expanded...once the settlement payment has been finalised, why is that not the end of the claim??Paperwork done, no more comebacks? Instead, insurance companies can basically do what ever they like, despite the fact you HAVE to pay them to be covered legally to drive on the road...then they go and change the goalposts when you make a claim. If there was one central HPi company that held all insurance claim details, it would save messes like the one we're in; then there would be no question as to whether an insurance comp had passed the details on or not. In our case, our 'insurance comp' (the one that likes to quote you happy) hadn't disclosed that the maserati was originally a Cat C to Hpi...funny that HPi is part of NU.

Astaroth

little_miss_thrifty wrote:

Hoorah!! Thank you! Can't see why it is so hard not to have a central database, or for DVLA to be expanded...once the settlement payment has been finalised, why is that not the end of the claim??

There is a central database for total losses called MIAFTR. As with most these things insurance companies have to pay an annual subscription to them for each connection they want to be able to make. Costs may have changed now that MIAFTR2 has been released but "back in my day" to give all our staff access to the database to make the checks would have cost £30,000,000 a year and that doesnt take into consideration that you also need the VIN number and not just the reg which most people dont have when they telephone and the cost of the extra call handling time. Even then it would only show a hit if the total loss had actually been loaded at the time of the quote. To continously check every single insured vehicle every single day in case the status had changed would cripple every network.

They do have to add the details at the end of the claim but remember that some claims can last 6+ years and whilst when payout is eventually made it has to be loaded to MIAFTR it could have had a large number of subsequent owners since then.

Of cause the rules could be changed so that the owners of the vehicle must register the total loss rather than an insurer (who wouldnt do it unless they have to due to the cost aspect) but would you trust people to do something that devalues their own property?

little_miss_thrifty

little_miss_thrifty wrote:

This unfortunately is not the first time HPi has been useless to us....
We bought a damaged Maserati 3200GT 2001 in 2003 knowing it was a Cat D this time! Unfortunately 3 months ago hubby had an accident in it (was fine) and it was written off and was offered £**K in settlement (still waiting). 48 hrs later, insurance comp phone informing us that on their records they had previously written car off in 2001 (when car was 6 months old) and had classed it a Cat C. This did not show up on our HPi report when we were first looking as it, thus we ended up buying a car that had one knowingly been written off (cat D) and once UNKNOWINGLY written off (Cat C). They then changed their settlement offer, knocking off £2000 because of what they called hidden information (THEIR hidden info!!) Hpi said they were not informed of Cat C, insurance comp said they HAD told HPi.....WHAT HOPE HAVE THE PUBLIC GOT!?!?!?!?:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

UPDATE - 5th Sept...
We wrote to the insurance company after out initial payout (finally, after 3 months!!) to complain about the service and the fact that we were paying for their mistake (above)....they investigated and wrote back, saying they were extremley sorry, don't know why the Cat C information was never entered on to the system and offered us £2000 in compensation!! THANKYOU!!!!
VERY HAPPY!!:T :T :T