NatWest/CPP – rejection of mobile phone insurance claim - worst excuse ever?

Gradoli83

My wife recently sent a claim to CCP for accidental damage to her mobile phone (the insurance is provided as part of her NatWest Advantage Gold account). I would be interested to know whether the reason given for rejecting this claim is the lamest on record …

The accident occurred when she was at the front door pulling the keys out of her bag. Her iPhone 4 fell out while she was doing this, and the back panel of it broke. She sent a form to this effect to CPP.

She received a letter from CPP saying that the claim had been declined. It stated:

“The decision to decline your claim has been taken for the following reason(s):

- Make a statement in support of a claim knowing the statement to be false in any respect, or submit a document in support of a claim knowing the document to be forged or false in any respect.”

She was naturally puzzled by this and phoned CPP. They said that the reason was that there was a discrepancy between her initial telephone call and the claim form. They said that on the claim form she had written “I reached to the bottom of my bag” but that when she phoned to request the claim form they claimed that she had said “he reached into my bag.”

The rejection of the claim depends entirely on whether this single word was heard as “I” or “HE” as there was no other discussion or questions during the telephone call about anyone else being involved in the incident.

It does seem extraordinary that if they are going to use the telephone report as a check on the consistency of the written report, no questions were asked about the mysterious ‘he’! A pretty spectacular failure on the part of the person taking this call not to ask, for example: Was this person attempting to steal from your bag? Was this reported to the police?

She wrote a long email in response to this making these various points, but just received a reply basically saying that they had reviewed the case, still thought that she had said ‘HE’ not ‘I’ and stood by their original decision.

Given that the cost of repair of the phone is only about a few months’ insurance premium, she’s just going to go ahead and get the repairs done and draw a line under this. She’s had the NatWest Advantage Gold for over 10 years (currently £12.95 per month) – that’s a lot of money spent on premiums and clearly for her an entirely useless product.

We’ve both been with NatWest for over 30 years – I’ll be seeing the bank shortly to discuss closing all of our accounts with them – I will be interested in NatWest’s response.

The irritation will remain, however, of spending a lot of money over the years on premiums and then being told that a small and straightforward claim is being declined because you are acting fraudulently.

A question: My concern is that this accusation of ‘fraudulence’ will be on their records. That’s not so much of a problem I guess as we won’t use them again, but is this kind of information shared between insurance companies?

Quentin

Gradoli83 wrote: »

....A question: My concern is that this accusation of ‘fraudulence’ will be on their records. That’s not so much of a problem I guess as we won’t use them again, but is this kind of information shared between insurance companies?

Yes .

ACG

i have an RBS royalties account...its basically the same as yours as theyre both the same company just with different badges.

Mine is free as i used to be staff there many moons ago and ive found it to be a good little account really. When i was first learning to drive i had a rubbish car and it was breaking down all the time - the green flag cover came in a treat each and every time.

The insurance on your account isnt run by natwest its just a free addition - your £12 a month hasnt gone just towards mobile phone insurance, its gone towards a better interest rate, holiday insurance, green flag plus a number of other things.

So to hold natwest accountable is a little strange. I agree its a pretty poor excuse but have a look who the insurance is underwritten by, i doubt it will be natwest.

TSx

If they've sent you a response to your complaint, ask them for a final decision letter and then take it to the FOS who will impartially look at the complaint for free - they certainly will need a lot more than that to successfully repudiate a claim.

Labmanager

As an aside iphone 4 back covers are inexpensive (£6ish on ebay) and easy to replace.

Gradoli83

Having checked with the complaints department of CPP/Homecare, they did indeed confirm (after quite a lot of probing) that the information about ‘fraudulence’ on their records may be passed on to another insurance company if it were requested. So, thanks to the responses above for alerting us to that.

Even though my wife had not intended initially to bother with writing a complaint in response to the outcome of her appeal (since it had subsequently turned out that the cost of an authorised repaired was only slightly more than the excess of £25 – and thanks too for the eBay tip), she has now needed to do so in order to remedy the ‘fraudulence’ status of the claim on their records.

I’m not sure that it is so strange to hold NatWest accountable – not for the particular decision obviously, but on their choice of CPP to use as part of their Advantage Gold package. It is certainly not a ‘free addition’ – in promoting the Advantage Gold account three key benefits are emphasised (in this order) Mobile phone insurance, Green Flag car breakdown cover and Annual world wide travel insurance. If my wife’s car had broken down it’s possible that the package may have been useful, but given that it happened to be a damaged phone, then the rejection of the appeal and the ‘fraudulence’ record that may prejudice other insurance dealings, means that the product for her was not, in fact, just useless but worse than useless.

We are now in the process of closing our accounts with NatWest and withdrawing our investments – the bank was sympathetic, but their hands were tied since they were not able to offer any products other than those with CPP, but interestingly they did imply that ending their association with CPP was under consideration.

Given the FSA’s conclusions about CPP’s mis-selling, there is an irony in the casual way that CPP appears to accuse their customers of fraudulence based on their highly questionable interpretation of evidence!