insurance claim for carjacking

shooby1

I am writing this and really mad:mad: we have our own business and employ 2 ladies who use a van to work from. Last week they were carjacked and the van and equipment were taken, the police were notified straight away by 999 and have been great.
Obviously the ladies involved were very upset about it all but are doing great and neither was injured. Then i went about making insurance claim:(
omg how difficult should it be, they have reffered the case to an outside company to investigate, i dont have a problem with that i understand there reasoning but they have interviewed the lady involved today over the phone and reduced her to tears by insinuating that she was lying that she wasn't in the van at all:mad: they also told her that it was a serious offence to lie about the facts, i am so mad that they are allowed to do this especially to her who isn't even the policyholder, they were on the phone for an hour to her and grilled her beyond belief, can they do this?

any help appreciated

G_M

Not sure what help you want/expect.

This sounds very harsh, but not much can be done. Insurance fraud is on the increase ('back-ending', theft of/from vehicles, etc) so the industry increasingly investigates. Like you I'd expect them to do so sensitively, but maybe they sometimes have to be harsh to pull the truth out of fraudulant claimsters. I don't know.

Was the 2nd girl's presence very relevant to the claim? Claim for personal injury? Vital witness statement? If so they'd need to be sure she was there.

shooby1

G_M wrote: »

Not sure what help you want/expect.

This sounds very harsh, but not much can be done. Insurance fraud is on the increase ('back-ending', theft of/from vehicles, etc) so the industry increasingly investigates. Like you I'd expect them to do so sensitively, but maybe they sometimes have to be harsh to pull the truth out of fraudulant claimsters. I don't know.

Was the 2nd girl's presence very relevant to the claim? Claim for personal injury? Vital witness statement? If so they'd need to be sure she was there.

i totally understand that they have to be vigilant but all we are claiming is for the van, no personal injury or anything, the thing is they have access to police reports and the police have the guy driving away in a rush on cctv so really cant understand why be so heavy handed? surely they should not be able to accuse her of being a fraud, at the end of the day she is only employed by us and i really dont think she should have to take this abuse, what annoys me is that my husband was run into the back of in may and the other person admitted full responsilbility, we had endless calls from the insurance and people acting for them suggesting we claim personal injury when there wasnt any injury our principles would't allow us to do it!! we have never claimed on insurance before for anything and have been insured with this company for a number of years surely they can look back at this and see we are just hones hardworking people who pay for a service and don't expect abuse when we try and use it.

dacouch

It is unlikely the Insurers will have access to the police report, this is because they normally have to apply for a copy via the police which can typically take 6 weeks depending on the police force. Again they would also need to request a copy (or to view the cctv on site) which can also take weeks

Insurers treat all theft claims with suspicion and thoroughly investigate all theft claims, your claim would probably be investigated even more as an Insurance policy typically excludes theft claims where the keys were left in or on the car when it was unattended. The Insurers could reasonably suspect that the van has been stolen when the keys had been left in it and it was unattended. This would explain there thorough investigation as people do pretend they have been car jacked when they have had their car stolen after leaving the keys in it and realising it is not covered.

The above may explain why the interviewer insinuated she was not in the van as they were trying to establish whether the car was unattended with the keys in or on it

There may be other issues causing the Insurers to investigate the claim more thoroughly eg the car being due for an mot shortly etc

The 1 hour interview the driver had is fairly standard, it is called a cognitive interview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_interview this involves asking what happened and then asking for it to be repeated repetitively as people lying will often slip up. The technique also involves asking very detailed questions that seem unrelated eg they may ask what clothes the driver was wearing at the time etc etc. This is because someone who has made up a story will often not have planned responses to obscure questions.

The interviewer is correct in advising the driver that telling lies could be classed as fraud when dealing with an Insurance claim, if they did not warn her and a lie was told she would not be happy if she was later interviewed by the police.

Theft claims have a very high incidence of fraud, so Insurers do investigate them fully, the techniques can sometimes appear over the top and no doubt there can be times when the person dealing with the claim goes over the top.

Once the Insurers are happy it is a valid claim they should proceed with settling it.

lisyloo

i really dont think she should have to take this abuse

I don't either, but at the same time they are entitled to ask questions.
Is she being overly sensitive?
If it was me I would refuse to deal with someone who was either rude or abusive, but I would expect them to ask questions about my version of events.

You could always make a formal complaint.

Warning her that it's an offence to lie and asking her questions for an hour don't seem to be things to complain about to me. So it's difficult for us to judge whether she is being over sensitive or whether she has been mis-treated.

If you think she has been mis-treated then make a formal complaint to you insurer stating the issues and that you don't expect your drivers to be treated in that manner. You will need to be specific and not just "they were too harsh". So I would offer to your employee to make that complaint.

She could have put the phone down or refused to continue the conversation if she felt it was beyond the call of duty.

kittykarate

I was car jacked for a 3 month old car. The insurance investigator came out and questioned me for about an hour - he did give warnings about the seriousness of insurance fraud to me, but as he was in person I could see it was more of a script than being aimed at me. I did get quite upset by the whole process, but I think that was more from having to think about being attacked and relive the experience for his statements, rather than his attitude.

Don't get me started on the police statements! GMP continually lost my statement so I had to give it 3 times, I felt particularly raw about that as all I wanted to do was put the whole experience behind me.