Ensleigh Car Insurance - What a mess

Shiny.Side.Up

Looking for some advice here - I feel like we're being conned because we're young and naiive!!

Ok, this is a very complicated story. Let me see if I can explain it in a way that makes sense.

Yesterday evening: OH is travelling from his home in Spalding (Lincs) to collect me from university in Kingston (London). In slow moving traffic, the car in front of him fails to react to a shunt, and as a result OH doesn't react fast enough (*cough*Is-too-close-to-the-car-in-front*cough*) and plows into the back of car in front. This occurs in the outside lane and several cars are left stranded on the central reservation of the M25.

He informs the police, then rings his insurance agent who connect him to a recovery agent - This agent turns out to be EuropeAssist. He gives his location and they dispatch an OnTime recovery vehicle to pick him up. He begins to attempt to arrange picking me up from Kingston and then being transported back to Spalding. During this deal-making, the police arrive and OH hangs up to assist moving his and other cars onto the hard shoulder. At this point, no deal has been made. Equally, OH is unaware that there is currently a recovery truck en-route to him (either he wasn't told, or in the confusion and shock, he didn't register this information.)

With the cars secure on the hard shoulder, OH calls the insurance agents back, who supposedly put him back through to EuropeAssist. However, this did not happen; He was put through to DriversAssist. In the shock of the accident, no one appears to realise the mistake and another recovery vehicle, again from the company "OnTime" is issued to the scene. This time, a deal is struck in which OH will pay £56 for recovery from the M25 to Kingston and then the insurance agents will pay for recovery from Kingston back home to Spalding. This time OH is made aware that an OnTime recovery truck is coming to pick him up. It is agreed that DriversAssist will invoice him for the agreed recovery.

40 minutes later, an OnTime truck appears to collect OH. He assumes this is the truck from DriversAssist and his car is collected from the scene and taken to Kingston. It is not until the recovery driver unloads the vehicle that we realise the agreement has gone terribly wrong somewhere.

Stranded in Kingston (it is now approximately 8.30pm on saturday night), we attempt to trace where the issue has arisen. After much discussion, it is found that the recovery vehicle from EuropeAssist is the one that had collected us. There was no deal struck with this agent as OH had to disconnect to assist Police. Trrying to trace the deal with DriveAssist, we find that because their truck arrived to find no vehicle to collect, our deal is null and void. DriveAssist offer to collect the vehicle and bring it back to Spalding, but for a fee of £2.50 a mile, which comes to over £250.

So this leads us to 10:30 on a saturday night. There's nothing further that can be done at this point, so we go to bed. Given that the car does not start, we are forced to leave it in Kingston and get the train home to Spalding as OH has to work.

I ring the insurance company again today. But now, we appear to be stuck in a loophole.

The insurance company are saying that because the car is in a secure location, they are not going to collect it as an emergency. That's fine, I can see their logic. However, that does mean that the car will be collected as a "non-emergency" after the bank holiday weekend. However, because we're effectively two "single" people (different resident addresses, no martial status etc), without dependents and such we are "low priority" which means it's unlikely the car will be recovered until wednesday because of the backlog.

They are also saying that until the car is collected (Let's say, for arguments sake, wednesday afternoon) and assessed (thursday morning?), they won't issue a curtosy car. That leaves us without a car until.. thursday afternoon? Although I don't work here in Spalding, OH does and if you know the area, you'll know it's very rural. As a chef, OH works odd hours and public transport is not possible. Equally, due to the late hours although it's possible family can take him to work, it's not fair to burden them with picking him up at midnight and thus we're relying on taxis without a car.

Is there anything we can do to get a car quicker? Can we bill the insurance company for the taxis?

Equally, the car is now stranded in Kingston. The agents are saying that unless someone is present at the car, they cannot collect it. This means that OH will either have to take a day off work, or I (or both) will have to travel back to Kingston at essentially very short notice to in order to simply be present for them to load the car onto the vehicle, to travel back to Spalding 10 minutes later.

Why can't we authorise them to collect the vehicle without us being present?

Sorry it's such a long winded story. Hopefully, it's understable and someone can help.

foxyd3vil12

my experience with endsleigh is that they do things in their own time. took over two months to finalise both my non-fault claims. drive assist are even more useless. as your accident is fault mind, i think you just have to keep pressuring them

endsleigh still offer me slightly cheaper car insurance over my current insurer but i would never go back to them again just by saving a couple of pennies!

good luck!