MSE News: MPs demand action to put the brakes on car insurance price surge

single_lonely

Last year (in the ice) someone crashed into the back of me.
He said ill pay cash but looked at the quotes and said no i cant afford it.
Ended up taking it to garage who charged other parties insurance over £1200.
I ended up with increase in insurance of over £1200 when i renewed.
For the next 4 years its going to stay pretty much the same.

I honestly wish i hadnt involved the insurance and just payed for the damage myself (it feels like im doing it at the moment).
Every week i get a call from car crash companies asking do you want help in claiming whiplash.
If i was in the car i may have got hurt and may have claimed.
even when i tell them i wasnt in the car they still say i can claim!

TrickyWicky

I had a claim a couple of years back after a slip on black ice. No one was in the other car thankfully but things didn't go well with the insurers who wanted to make life rather difficult. The wrote it off, sent me a cheque that I never cashed and then had no hesitation putting up my premiums despite the fact I'd told them to cancel the claim. 2 years later and many arguements and letters, they've finally cancelled the claim and refunded me the lowered premiums which was nice.

So there you go guys, next time you make a claim and find out its going to cost you more cancel / buyback the claim instead. You might have to pay the charges the insurers incurred (collection of vehicle and storage etc) but your premiums won't take a hit. It is the best thing I've done as I severely regretted making the claim afterwards and the other side didn't even want to claim as he was about to trade it in under the scrappage scheme.

mcgsp

Sorry atrixblue.-MFR- I needed to qualify the remark about prescription drugs.

in this particular case the guy was obviously on an EXCESS of prescription drugs! His passenger seat was littered with boxes with his details, dosage etc on them and there were also loose tablets! His first comment after hitting us at speed (not a little shunt) was "sorry, I'm on the way to the doctor's!"

We were very lucky that the rear end of the car and headrests took the impact and that I had just released the handbrake and put the car into gear. The insurance company should still not have been trying hard to get us to make a personal injury claim.

scheming_gypsy

Lum wrote: »

The car was a heavily modified 200SX, it had a rebuilt and upgraded engine and a rebuilt and upgraded automatic gearbox, the chassis had been professionally restored and resprayed, it also had some much simpler modifications, wheels, suspension, ECU, turbo, intercooler etc.

The insurance decided it was worth £850, after arguing we got £1850 for it.
You couldn't get a 200SX close to the condition of hers for anything near £1850, most of them are rustbuckets and/or smashed up by drifters. In the end we ended up going with one with a good clean shell, but an engine that was close to death, and had a manual gearbox, for £2100.
It cost us £350 to buy back the remains of the old car for parts, and £600 at mates rates to have everything transferred over.

Total cost, £3050, Total payout £1850. A loss of £1200

So even with a £1000 personal injury claim, we're still down £200 and having to pay increased premiums for the next 5 years.

Is it really any wonder people are so keen to claim?

but they can only pay out on the book price of the cars. How come she didn't go for an agreed valuation policy if it was modified and worth more?

davidgmmafan

I agree something is very wrong here. The personal injury cases have something to do with it as I recall reading somewhere (maybe here) that we have a very low rate of accidents compared to other companies but very high personal injury claim rates. Its a bit comical the insurance companies blaming this whilst at the same time they are taking the referral fees.

Its all very well to say they are recouping the costs but what they are really doing is passing the cost on to us, meaning more expensive premiums, meaning more uninsured drivers which we then pay for with you've guess it higher premiums!

What ARE the insurance companies doing to tackle uninsured drivers other than just shrugging and contiuing to go about thier (dubious) business.

Great points about the repairs etc etc, that is clearly another are we are paying through the nose for. Of particular concern is the way the garages seem to know the rules of the game, like the threshold below which the insurance company will waive it through.

I think it also bothers a lot of people if you are involved in an accident, any accident, you are deemed a higher risk. What if I avoid someone driving whos drunk or high and hit someone else? Am I really to blame? If the same driver hits me what was I supposed to do? Make the vehicle disappear? Why should I and others pay for thier stupidty?

Finally on the point of claiming, which I have never done, their is an issue of honest similar to the repairs issue raised above. A friend of my grandads is currently fighting with an insurance company. He was hit by someone else and people present (apart from the other driver) including the police officer who saw it believes the other driver was at fault. The insurance company refuses to accept this and are offering some sort of knock for knock kind of thing. He's not bothered about the money but he is fighting the principle. Without boring you with the full details he wasn't moving, waiting to turn right in the proper place. The other car drove into the side of him. How can the insurance company therefore be talking such non-sense?

Fortunately he has the time and money to wait and fight this but how many people know they're being shafted but just accept it because they NEED a speedy resolution (surely one of the reasons we have insurance????).

Percy1983

chanz4 wrote: »

People claim due to greed on a lot of occasions seeing free money, they dont think about the insurance.

I will agree with this but I will say as a rational person who has been stiffed on insurance for many years that if I was in an accident a whiplash claim would be a good way of getting come that money back.

But then that claim will in turn cause higher prices, so very much a chicken and egg arguement.

But a do agree there needs to be something done about this.

Lum

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

but they can only pay out on the book price of the cars. How come she didn't go for an agreed valuation policy if it was modified and worth more?

Hindsight is 20/20. I always thought that when claiming off a third party they had to put you back in the position you were in before the accident. The risk of losing out in a fault claim was one we deemed to be acceptable.

The book price rarely seems to reflect reality anyway. In the case of the 200SX prices have become very inflated these last few years due to the "scene tax" that comes from their popularity in drift events.

In any case we couldn't even get an unmodified example for the price they insurance paid out.

Gloomendoom

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

i take prescription drugs, does that make me more likely to cause a crash then?

It might do. It depends on the drugs. I have been prescribed drugs and been told not to drive because of the side effects.

Crabman

Lum wrote: »

Hindsight is 20/20. I always thought that when claiming off a third party they had to put you back in the position you were in before the accident.

This seems entirely reasonable to me. Sadly insurers are rarely reasonable and too many people just lay down and accept everything the insurer says (including paltry settlement offers).

Honest John always says in his column that if you sue a third party for negligence (and can demonstrate negligence) in a non-fault accident they have to put you back in the original position.

I often wonder when he advises filing court proceedings against the other party as it does seem to speed the claims process up significantly.

Here's a link to the FAQ on his site:

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/blameless-crashes/