When am I entitled to my Excess back?

Littlesusie_2

I was just wondering if anyone can help.
I was driving past some roadworks while on holiday in Norfolk in Oct 2008. They were filling a large open topped truck with rubble, as I was passing some of the rubble fell on my car and smashed the sunroof. I reported the incident to the site manager and claimed on our insurance when we got home. I paid Admiral £150 excess. After a year of phone calls to admiral and albany Assitance (whom Admiral had given our claim too) and getting nowhere I got a letter out of the blue saying that the no claims discount had been re instated to the policy. I phoned Admiral, who told us the 3rd party had finally admitted responsibility. I naively thought than we would get our money back and that would be that. We hadn't heard anything and last week I sent a letter of complaint to both Albany assistance and Admiral. Admiral wrote back this morning saying that they had not received any money from the 3rd party or their insurers so therefore would not be giving our excess back.
Can Admiral do this? Do I have any other course of action other than wait and see if Admiral decide to take the matter to court?

rev_henry

Littlesusie wrote: »

I was just wondering if anyone can help.
I was driving past some roadworks while on holiday in Norfolk in Oct 2008. They were filling a large open topped truck with rubble, as I was passing some of the rubble fell on my car and smashed the sunroof. I reported the incident to the site manager and claimed on our insurance when we got home. I paid Admiral £150 excess. After a year of phone calls to admiral and albany Assitance (whom Admiral had given our claim too) and getting nowhere I got a letter out of the blue saying that the no claims discount had been re instated to the policy. I phoned Admiral, who told us the 3rd party had finally admitted responsibility. I naively thought than we would get our money back and that would be that. We hadn't heard anything and last week I sent a letter of complaint to both Albany assistance and Admiral. Admiral wrote back this morning saying that they had not received any money from the 3rd party or their insurers so therefore would not be giving our excess back.
Can Admiral do this? Do I have any other course of action other than wait and see if Admiral decide to take the matter to court?

Give them a call, tell them to sue the 3rd party or you will, for your excess. Then do so. Ask Admiral for their insurance details, as they're obviously incapable of doing the job themselves. Then sue their insurance company and them jointly for your excess. Of course at this point Admiral may decide to do what you pay them to do and do it for you, but if not it should be fairly easy. Maybe you should just call or write to the 3rd party insurance company directly first, asking for your excess to be paid to you, and the balance of the damage to be paid to Admiral, which they have admitted they now owe surely? Seems a strange situation to be in, 3rd party have admitted liability but not paid up.

Rolandtheroadie

It sounds like you didnt have legal cover on your insurance and albany assistance were working to recover your losses.
If thats the case, it's Albany you should be dealing with.

colino

You pay your premiums to Admiral, complain directly to them and follow it up in writing. An absolute joke of an organisation designed to extract premiums from more and more people and do less and less for their customers.

rev_henry

colino wrote: »

You pay your premiums to Admiral, complain directly to them and follow it up in writing. An absolute joke of an organisation designed to extract premiums from more and more people and do less and less for their customers.

Hit the nail on the head. Albany I've heard is another of those atrocious credit hire/claims handling companies.

raskazz

colino wrote: »

You pay your premiums to Admiral, complain directly to them and follow it up in writing. An absolute joke of an organisation designed to extract premiums from more and more people and do less and less for their customers.

Why do people insist on giving out such poor advice? The OP needs to speak to Albany Assitance to reclaim uninsured losses, including the excess.

bezzza

Be prepared for a lengthy fight with Albany - I was in a serious car accident 3 years ago (not my fault), HGV driver admitted fault at scene, after chasing Albany for 3 weeks (Elephant, my then insurers, just kept passing me to them as they said that's what I paid my legal protection for) they allocated me a solicitor in ........................... Essex (I lived in Liverpool). It took just under 2 years to get the £250 excess, 2 1/2 years for personal injury payout and 3 years for loss of earnings!!!!!!!! Absolute joke!

vaio

raskazz wrote: »

Why do people insist on giving out such poor advice? The OP needs to speak to Albany Assitance to reclaim uninsured losses, including the excess.

That was my first thought but doesn’t the fact that ncb has been reinstated mean that the TP have accepted responsibility and will therefore have paid the whole amount of the repair cost to Admiral?

Littlesusie_2

Thanks for your advice guys.
Admiral never gave us a choice about anything they just said where to take the car for repair. (We were supposed to have a hire car but that never materialised.) Then we just had a letter from Albany saying they were pursuing our loses on behalf of Admiral. We did have legal cover on the policy so I assumed that Albany were the legal company.
We've phoned both Admiral and Albany on so many occassions and all they do is refer us to each other. It's like they have this set up so they can just blame each other and never pay out. The 3rd party is May Guerney and as they're a construction company I expect they've been hit hard in the recession and are holding on to their cash as long as possible. It take them over a year to admit they were even working on that day - even though we spoke to the site manager.
We sent letters to both companies giving then 28 days before we go to the ombudsman but I'm not sure if they can do anything.
I've never had anything to do with the court system, the idea of suing freaks me out. :eek:

One thing I've learnt is that it's not always a good idea to go with the cheapest insurance quote.

raskazz

vaio wrote: »

That was my first thought but doesn’t the fact that ncb has been reinstated mean that the TP have accepted responsibility and will therefore have paid the whole amount of the repair cost to Admiral?

No, it means that Admiral have recovered their outlay (which doesn't include the excess).

rev_henry

Look up soolin's thread of a similar nature to this. She was in a similar position and told Albany that she didn't want to use them, and went through Admiral only. I think she got somewhere doing this.