Refund of my excess

taffy056

After a bit of advice, I was involved in a accident in 2006 that the third party was trying to claim personal injuries, after 3 years of arguing its been determined that I was not at fault at all as they pulled out in front of me on a filter lane.

Anyway there was over £4k of damages done to my vehicle, and I had to pay an excess of £500 to get the vehicle fixed under my insurance, now we are still arguing about my loss of earnings as it amounts to a few thousand, but as the third party insurance company has admitted liability I asked for my excess to be sent to me as its not part of the argument, they agreed four weeks ago through RAC Legal services.

My problem is that this money has not been sent back to me, and I am left with issuing a small claim (RAC are useless) to get this money I am legally entitled to be paid, now I am in a quandary, who do i issue proceedings too, their solicitors, third party insurance company or RAC or all three?

Also if anyone can offer alternative advice on my next step if not the small claims, I am really at a loss with this, one final thing, because I lost my no claims in the years following the accident, do I have any chance of recovering some money back from my brokers and other insurance companies? It was a commercial insurance for a taxi, so my premiums was costing circa £1200 and it raised to about £1700 after.

Thanks!

Paradigm

The 1st place I'd try is http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/about/index.html

taffy056

Paradigm wrote: »

The 1st place I'd try is http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/about/index.html

Thanks for the advice, I have raised the complaint to the FOS, and today Aviva has written to me in relation to it, hopefully my complaint will be sorted out quicker than the claim has taken so far

dacouch

You cannot normally complain to the FOS about an Insurer that is not your own.

If I were you I would just ring the other Insurer, be polite and explain the problems not having your excess is causing, if your polite they will probably order the check straight away

Paradigm

dacouch wrote: »

You cannot normally complain to the FOS about an Insurer that is not your own.

Why's that then?

sarahg1969

Paradigm wrote: »

Why's that then?

It's just the way it works. The ombudsman deals with issues between the insurer and their own customer (as with any of the other onbudsman services). Can you imagine how many spurious complaints there would be if you could complain about someone else's insurer?

Paradigm

sarahg1969 wrote: »

It's just the way it works. The ombudsman deals with issues between the insurer and their own customer (as with any of the other onbudsman services). Can you imagine how many spurious complaints there would be if you could complain about someone else's insurer?

Ah ok, never really thought about it to be honest

Just that I had a similar problem to the OP a couple of years ago & the FOS were very good, I assumed they were for all insurance probs.

Cheers.

Treadway1

taffy056 wrote: »

...one final thing, because I lost my no claims in the years following the accident, do I have any chance of recovering some money back from my brokers and other insurance companies? It was a commercial insurance for a taxi, so my premiums was costing circa £1200 and it raised to about £1700 after.

Thanks!

Don't know if this will help but I was in a slightly similar situation after a motorbike accident a while ago. Third party were arguing liability but it eventually came down in my favour, although as it had taken over a year, I had paid a higher premium on my renewal having lost my NCB. I had a few arguments with one particular staff member in the call centre (Somehow I always seemed to go through to the same guy on multiple occassions!) about it as he was saying that I wasn't due any refund. I argued continually that I was and eventually managed to speak with a supervisor who agreed that I should be re-imbursed and I received a cheque about a week later, so it can happen. I did have the same insurance provider the whole way through the claim though so dont know if it would be more difficult to chase different companies if you swapped. Im guessing that if you hunted around for the best deal and told them you had lost your NCB because of an ongoing dispute, they may now see it as your hard luck that you paid a higer premium.

If you do manage to get someone to say they will re-imnurse you, dont expect it to be as much as you might calculate it to be, as I was expecting around £300 but only ended up getting about £100. They argued that my premium would have gone up instead of down on the renewal anyway the following year as insurance in general was rising and blah, blah, blah. TBH I got bored of the arguing and just accepted £100 that I didnt think I would ever get back anyway.

Moral of the story, Insurance companies are bar stewards.... oh and don't stop fighting for what you're owed!

taffy056

Thought i'd update this thread, forgot about it to be honest anyway, it has all been settled now after after the RAC issued proceedings against the third party insurers, it got to the solicitor stage where they told me that their fees for proceeding to the first stage was around £5k, I got a cheque for about £2k just before Christmas covering all my out of pocket expenses.

Handy just for the time of year |I guess lol