Agreeing a payout with insurance company

CrazyRatLady_2

My boyfriend classic car was stolen off our driveway on October 11th over night. Police gave us a crime reference number and that was it. I did alot of leg work trying to track it down - talking to neighbours, putting it in the local paper, a national car magazine, spreading it all over the internet, checking local businesses for CCTV etc but no trace of the car has been found.

Anyway boyfriend rang insurance company straight after he informed the police. Over a month after the theft they offered him £3.5k (less £250 excess). He wasn't entitled to a courtesy car for theft despite being fully comp so we had to use my overdraft to find him another car to get to work in (luckily got an amazing bargain on a BMW 318i SEwith M3 extras - £485 and it sailed through an MOT).

He denied the offer as a full and final settlement because the car was worth at least a grand more than that. They said they'd send him a cheque anyway and it wouldn't affect his ability to continue the claim for additional payout (the letter they sent stated the same).

We have emailed them with the 'evidence' they asked for to ascertain additional value ie. adverts for 'similar' cars. The problem being that it was a modified classic and there aren't any other cars that give direct comparsions - there are ones of the same age, same rough mileage, same condition, same size engine, same alloys etc but not althogether. Anyway sent them about 15 adverts from various sources of cars that were as close to ours as I could get - these had an average value of just over £5k.

The insurers acknowledged the email and said they'd soon be in touch when they had looked at the evidence. About a week later my boyfriend rang them and they said he'd hear from them 'by the end of the week or early next week' forward to the end of the next week and he rang them again 'oh it could be another couple of weeks'. He told them, he'd been told he'd have an answer by now so they said they'd try and 'hurry the engineers on a bit'. Last week he rang again and the guy on the phone said 'could be another 3 weeks or so, I can't make them do it faster you'll just have to wait.'

I say he should ring them every day and hopefully they'll get so bored of talking to him they'll try to come to a resolution Any other ideas for getting anywhere with them?

I think I read somewhere that insurers have to pay interest if they fail to settle a claim within a certain time frame but I don't know how long this is. Also can we ask for payment for the cost of constant phone calls and the £9 it cost me to send them all the cars paper work special delivery as per their request (several hundred bits of paper - pretty much all the receipts for everything bought for the car in 4 years, the V5, MOT certificates etc)?

Thanks.

Hintza

Was it on a classic policy? What was the car?

CrazyRatLady_2

Hintza wrote: »

Was it on a classic policy? What was the car?

I don't think so, it wasn't an agreed value policy unfortunately (he was lead to believe it was - asked for one, they asked for photos etc but he didn't check the paperwork) when he questioned them about it they said he had an 'agreed market value of £4.5k' but market value is what they're supposed to pay out so if what they'd said was true we wouldn't be arguing with them now. They lie alot on the phone - once he rang them twice in one day, the second time he rang they said 'the person you spoke to yesterday isn't in today' - erm he didn't ring yesterday he rang 3 hours ago!

It was insured via Adrian Flux as the brokers.

It was a 1974 mini.

This is it at a show about 2 months before it was stolen.

TrickyWicky

Sorry to hear about the loss. Keep checking ebay, keep advertising, and most of all start going round the local scrap / metal dealers. My neighbour has a classic car on his drive and came home one day to find !!!!!! trying to tow it off his drive :eek: They thought they'd found themselves a load of scrap metal even though its condition is pristine. Unfortunately Minis are small cars and not exactly hard to remove.

If you get another classic car like that, for gods sake, fit a hidden tracker and don't tell anyone about it (if they know, it'll be the first thing they look for to turn off / remove). Get a cheap tracker fitted (one thats wired into the cars power supply / battery) which can transmit via a 3G or GPRS signal so you can locate it via the internet. If no-one knows its fitted it'll give you at least a day or two to track its resting place and either go and take it back or send the police to get it. My personal recomendation would be to turn up, call 999 tell them where you are, it's an emergency and hang up. They'll be there faster than a speeding bullet.

CrazyRatLady_2

TrickyWicky wrote: »

Sorry to hear about the loss. Keep checking ebay, keep advertising, and most of all start going round the local scrap / metal dealers. My neighbour has a classic car on his drive and came home one day to find !!!!!! trying to tow it off his drive :eek: They thought they'd found themselves a load of scrap metal even though its condition is pristine. Unfortunately Minis are small cars and not exactly hard to remove.

If you get another classic car like that, for gods sake, fit a hidden tracker and don't tell anyone about it (if they know, it'll be the first thing they look for to turn off / remove). Get a cheap tracker fitted (one thats wired into the cars power supply / battery) which can transmit via a 3G or GPRS signal so you can locate it via the internet. If no-one knows its fitted it'll give you at least a day or two to track its resting place and either go and take it back or send the police to get it. My personal recomendation would be to turn up, call 999 tell them where you are, it's an emergency and hang up. They'll be there faster than a speeding bullet.

Thanks, we've got about 200 people keeping their eyes peeled for it and I constantly check the internet etc. Every classic mini I see on the road I'm tempted to follow to get a closer look haha and you can bet I'll be scrutinising every mini at car shows to see if they're ours in diguise

I'm all clued up on theft prevention now - infact I've written a 3000 word article about it for one of the national mini magazines which will hopefully be published in 2012.

We bought another mini with the payout we've had so far (a '76 pickup) in need of restoration which is currently in bits in our garage and it will only ever be parked in our garage when at home after the last one. Every one in town knew about the old mini (people we don't know still keep stopping us in the street and asking us if there's any news on her!) but apart from people in the clubs were in, only our family, one neighbour and now you lot know we have another one as we don't want to draw attention to it!

With my fishing around for information I found out that just before our car was taken a notorius car thief was released from prison around here and he's been seen taking cars since then, the police were looking for him and apparently he's back in prison now so there's a chance he's to blame. Another possibility is a ginger guy in a white ford transit who was spotted trying to steal another mini in our village (but wasn't prosecuted as he 'gave it back' when caught) and a friend caught the same guy having a sneaky look at another friends mini and told him to hop it. We'll probably never know who did it for sure, which is just as well for them as they'd regret it if I got my hands on them! It's a real shame as that wasn't just any car - it was my boyfriend's first ever mini and he was devoted to it, constant tinkering, spent about £7k on bits for it...oh well. just got to stop it happening again.

bestyman

A letter to the insurance ombudsman would be my next move.

CrazyRatLady_2

bestyman wrote: »

A letter to the insurance ombudsman would be my next move.

I think it might end up coming to that, but I don't know how much time we're expected to give the insurance company to sort it out before we resort to that measure.

Problem is my boyfriend is a bit of a push over - when it comes to writing letters and emails etc I do it for him and just sign his name on it. unfortunately I can't really pretend to be him on the phone so I have to try and predict what they're going to say and tell him what to say in response

TrickyWicky

Sounds like the ginger if you ask me. If he's been caught with one mini and then snooping after another then the odds are he's the bloke who nicked it.

Always a sad day when that special car vanishes, my first one was a megane. I loved that thing to bits I really did but it started to die a slow painful death and in the end the OH who was the RK/ real owner decided to get shot of it. I was devasted, barely spoke to her for two days and in fairness she said to me "Well you should of let me sign it over to you when I offered - i didn't want anything other than being rid of the maintenance". Fair point.. but even now I'm gutted. I've got another car now that I treasure to bits but no doubt at some point it's gonna get nicked, smashed, tree fallen on it etc. Good things don't last.. something always happens to them.

Good luck with the car and don't give up on it. I had a TV pinched from me once, the fuzz came round "Not much chance of us finding it mate" they said.. couple of weeks later I got a phone call: "We've got your TV at the station, turned up in some blokes house when we went to see him about something totally unrelated". What were the odds of that? - Almost none but I still got it back so you never know, keep putting the word out, offer a reward etc and you might just see it again. Don't offer any particular amount for the reward though otherwise people who know about it might start weighing up the options and it could condemn the car so just state 'reward offered for info, no questions' kind of thing. Someone somewhere will know something about that car as its clearly been researched and targeted. It's no good to a thief as its hot property so there will be at least one other person involved.

rev_henry

CrazyRatLady wrote: »

I think it might end up coming to that, but I don't know how much time we're expected to give the insurance company to sort it out before we resort to that measure.

Problem is my boyfriend is a bit of a push over - when it comes to writing letters and emails etc I do it for him and just sign his name on it. unfortunately I can't really pretend to be him on the phone so I have to try and predict what they're going to say and tell him what to say in response

:rotfl: I've done that kinda thing for my mother and my gf before now. Why not just tell him to say 'hello yes I am John Smith mother's maiden name etc, my partner deals with these things and I give permission for her to speak to you' and speak to them yourself.

Here's me thinking Adrian Flux were a decent specialist broker.

Sorry to hear about the poor mini.

Yes I imagine you could add the phone calls and stamps to the claim. Well I'd try to anyway.

Call/write to Flux now and request to make a formal complaint according to their complaints procedure (which they must have). You need to do this before going to the Ombudsman. They may resolve it properly once you put said formal complaint in, otherwise go on to the ombudsman, or threaten to. Someone on here a while ago managed to increase a payout significantly simply by the threat of the Ombudsman, because iirc the insurers have to pay a hefty fee to the Ombudsman for taking on a case, regardless of the outcome.

CrazyRatLady_2

rev_henry wrote: »

:rotfl: I've done that kinda thing for my mother and my gf before now. Why not just tell him to say 'hello yes I am John Smith mother's maiden name etc, my partner deals with these things and I give permission for her to speak to you' and speak to them yourself.

Here's me thinking Adrian Flux were a decent specialist broker.

Sorry to hear about the poor mini.

Yes I imagine you could add the phone calls and stamps to the claim. Well I'd try to anyway.

Call/write to Flux now and request to make a formal complaint according to their complaints procedure (which they must have). You need to do this before going to the Ombudsman. They may resolve it properly once you put said formal complaint in, otherwise go on to the ombudsman, or threaten to. Someone on here a while ago managed to increase a payout significantly simply by the threat of the Ombudsman, because iirc the insurers have to pay a hefty fee to the Ombudsman for taking on a case, regardless of the outcome.

That's really useful to know, thanks. Will get cracking on that tomorrow after work.
I suppose it's not really the fault of Adrian Flux - we deal straight with the insurer's themselves at the moment and it's them who's giving us the run around.

CrazyRatLady_2

TrickyWicky wrote: »

Sounds like the ginger if you ask me. If he's been caught with one mini and then snooping after another then the odds are he's the bloke who nicked it.

Always a sad day when that special car vanishes, my first one was a megane. I loved that thing to bits I really did but it started to die a slow painful death and in the end the OH who was the RK/ real owner decided to get shot of it. I was devasted, barely spoke to her for two days and in fairness she said to me "Well you should of let me sign it over to you when I offered - i didn't want anything other than being rid of the maintenance". Fair point.. but even now I'm gutted. I've got another car now that I treasure to bits but no doubt at some point it's gonna get nicked, smashed, tree fallen on it etc. Good things don't last.. something always happens to them.

Good luck with the car and don't give up on it. I had a TV pinched from me once, the fuzz came round "Not much chance of us finding it mate" they said.. couple of weeks later I got a phone call: "We've got your TV at the station, turned up in some blokes house when we went to see him about something totally unrelated". What were the odds of that? - Almost none but I still got it back so you never know, keep putting the word out, offer a reward etc and you might just see it again. Don't offer any particular amount for the reward though otherwise people who know about it might start weighing up the options and it could condemn the car so just state 'reward offered for info, no questions' kind of thing. Someone somewhere will know something about that car as its clearly been researched and targeted. It's no good to a thief as its hot property so there will be at least one other person involved.

Probably is his yes, I'm always on the look out for his van now anway.

I had thought about getting on to the local paper again and asking them to do another short article saying the car is still missing and there is a reward offered for information leading to its return (I know the car would belong to insurance company once claim settled but we could buy it back off them). We have a feeling it was stolen to order or for parts (if anything I hope it's not the latter- if we never get her back the best we can hope for is that she's had her identity changed and sold to someone who doesn't know the history and will look after her like we did). As you say though if was definately targeted and they picked their moment well - they did it when I was up in London and one of our neighbours was also away for the night, they obviously knew our cars were gone so there were less people around and less chance of being caught in the act.

There's always that tiny bit of hope it will turn up at some point - our friend has a 'find the mini' page on facebook and an older lady contacted him on there saying her first car was a mini and it got stolen, no suspects, insurance paid out etc - 30 years after it was stolen the police rang her to say they'd found her car! Now that's pretty amazing and she was over the moon to get it back after all that time.