Car Insurance claims

666diablo

Keep either a camera or have your camera phone with you and use it always. (Unless your afraid it will get taken).

I have just spent the last five years fighting my incompetent Insurance Company and had my complaint upheld by the f.o.s.

Although I could not have avoided this with a camera, it would have halved my paperwork and effort over five years.

I was rear ended by a bus in an area with police, council and London transport camera footage available. My insurance compnay refused to pay the nominal fee for this footage and even went so far as to say that they were not aware of this little fact.

Given that I provided a google live map of the site, which clearly showed that it happened outside a Bus Garage/train station on a major road. They had obviously done no research or investigation whatsoever and totally ignored me.

I was also later informed via letter that they did ont pursue the case due to their own financial concerns in pursuing my claim. Being a Bus Company, the case was DELIBERATLEY incompetently handled for 4 years by both companies.

Bus companies appear to 'play the long game' when dealing with insurance claims such as mine.

No insurance company can justifty chasing their tales for four years, apparently.

Regardless of fault.

The Bus company settled on a 50/50 basis with half of my excess being paid to me and the other half being paid to my Insurance company. I know this because my Insurance company sent me a copy of the letter from the Bus Company with my cheque. I made sure I got all of it, eventually.

WHICH MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

So save yourselves the headache and take pictures of everything.

Personally, I will not let the vehicle move until I have it captured on camera and call the police. I think I could have done this as it was a Bus that drove into the back of my car.

Do not be fooled by the fact that I was hit in the rear. According to my Insurance company, if the Bus company say their driver did not, then he did not and they do not need to prove anything.

Somehow I must have reversed into him, in moving traffic.

The final nail, was the f.o.s upholding my complaint and seeing £75 compensation as sufficent redress for five years of utter nonsence.

It was not worth the fight in the end as the Insurance company did not care then and have no reason for any concern now. Despite me staying a customer for another year as they kept telling me they were pursuing my claim.

sarahg1969

Did you not instruct a solicitor to deal with your claim?

InsideInsurance

How do you know it was a nominal fee for the CCTV footage? Back in my claims days some organisations wouldnt release CCTV footage without having it sent to a 3rd party company to remove the faces/ registration plates of everyone else visible in the video for their privacy and so to get copies could easily run into thousands.

Given claims costs are irrecoverable in small track cases it never makes sense to spend that amount of money to get a 100% liable result when you end up worse than simply accepting a 50/50 split and getting 50% of your outlay back.

vaio

InsideInsurance wrote: »

How do you know it was a nominal fee for the CCTV footage? Back in my claims days some organisations wouldnt release CCTV footage without having it sent to a 3rd party company to remove the faces/ registration plates of everyone else visible in the video for their privacy and so to get copies could easily run into thousands......

Nah, DPA sets a max charge of £10 for provision of CCTV footage

InsideInsurance wrote: »

......Given claims costs are irrecoverable in small track cases it never makes sense to spend that amount of money to get a 100% liable result when you end up worse than simply accepting a 50/50 split and getting 50% of your outlay back.

That makes sense from the insurer point of view but, as well as encouraging at fault insurers to stonewall in the hope that the non fault party insurer will accept a 50/50 to save money, it's also arguable whether failing to pursue relatively clear cut liability (I think the OP was run into from behind) is against the "treat the customer fairly" rules.

The insurer might save a couple of hundred quid but the innocent policy holder will pay ££££ in fault loadings, excess & lost NCB.

InsideInsurance

According to out solicitors the council in question was correct - that the rights of the other parties in the images right to privacy were greater than our clients rights to have copies of the video.

Of cause an insurer cannot do a SAR request on behalf of someone else as they arent the subject but even if they had then it would have been denied under those grounds and then it gets into the more basic commercial option of paying for editing.


Whilst some people will pursue things to the end of the earth for "the principle" of the matter even if it means spending much more than they will ever recover a commercial organisation like an insurer will work more along the lines of what is cost effective than purely the principle.

I doubt anyone could argue that spending £10,000 to POSSIBLY get £5,000 (but not your £10,000 back) is going to fall foul of "treating customers fairly".

vaio

InsideInsurance wrote: »

According to out solicitors the council in question was correct - that the rights of the other parties in the images right to privacy were greater than our clients rights to have copies of the video.

Of cause an insurer cannot do a SAR request on behalf of someone else as they arent the subject but even if they had then it would have been denied under those grounds and then it gets into the more basic commercial option of paying for editing.......

Pretty sure DPA trumps solicitors advice & council rules, that's sort of the point of having laws. Councils are allowed to edit it to preserve privacy but they can't charge for the editing and still have to provide it within the 40 day time frame.

I'm guessing the above covers access requests by individuals, rules for businesses might be different but a request by an insurance company on behalf of a policy holder would surely counts as an individual application, if they can issue court proceedings in the name of policy holders then sure they can do a a SAR

InsideInsurance wrote: »

.....Whilst some people will pursue things to the end of the earth for "the principle" of the matter even if it means spending much more than they will ever recover a commercial organisation like an insurer will work more along the lines of what is cost effective than purely the principle.

I doubt anyone could argue that spending £10,000 to POSSIBLY get £5,000 (but not your £10,000 back) is going to fall foul of "treating customers fairly".

Yep, and equally I doubt that anybody would agree that failing to spend £10 on some CCTV footage to defend your policy holder is anything other than unfair.

Most cases will lie somewhere between these extremes but I agree a balance needs to be struck because if you don't then, as previously mentioned, it encourages dodgy at fault insurers to stonewall in the hope of a undeserved 50/50.

666diablo

Insideinsurance it took three e-mails to my local council over two days to find the info was avaialbe for a small charge..
I forwarded the e-mail to the f.o.s. and the Insurance company accepted that they could have but did not as they were not aware that camera footage was avaialable and it was not their normal practice anyway.

666diablo

More importantly, the delay tactics employed by the Bus Company via incompetence mostly was deliberate. It rendered my Insurance company totally usless.
It quickly became apparent that my insurers had no intention whatsoever of pursuing the claim as they would have for any other driver, regardless of fault.
Which they even made reference to in a letter for me sent via the f.o.s.

I assume they have the same procedure in place for Taxis, police, ambulances, fire engines etc etc etc.

I was not prepared to drop my rights for a Big Red Bus with the Big Yellow Elephant.

666diablo

sarahg1969 wrote: »

Did you not instruct a solicitor to deal with your claim?

Wish I had additional funds to instruct a solicitor to fight my own Insurance companies Lawyers who I was also paying for in my insurance premiums.

Wonder why I never thought of that?

InsideInsurance

vaio wrote: »

Pretty sure DPA trumps solicitors advice & council rules, that's sort of the point of having laws.

<snip>

I'm guessing the above covers access requests by individuals, rules for businesses might be different but a request by an insurance company on behalf of a policy holder would surely counts as an individual application.

The solicitors give advice on the law not make... it was raised to internal legal to validate if the councils interpretation of the law was acceptable and our solicitors said that it was.

I have no idea under the DPA if a proxy can apply on behalf of the subject and even if they can what evidence they need to provide that they are acting on behalf of the subject.

When I used to call garages, councils, car park operators etc and they confirmed the footage would still exist most simply gave it over, a few charged a nominal fee, a few said they'd do it but the PH would have to request it themselves and in one case a council said it would be £X,000 due to needing editing before release.

vaio

I think that's sort of the OPs complaint in a nutshell....insurance claims handlers & their legal advisers don't know the law so the fact that someone at the council wrongly states that it will cost ££££££ to have it edited doesn't get challenged and the policy holder is deprived of evidence