Reputable motor insurers...any out there!

SevenOfNine

OK, this may belong in the 'insurance' forum but I'll start with it here.

Obviously no-one knows how helpful/useful/fair/honest their motor insurer is until they've had a prang. We've now been hit TWICE in 2012 in the rear while our car was stationary - this time a write-off. Both occasions no fault on our part.

We've found both times our insurer H*st***s Direct (site of a famous battle ) AND the add-on legal cover supplied via them by C*rp*enters (people who work with wood), have shown themselves to be completely disinterested and lazy. Happy to have taken our premium but can't be asked to provide much info or support. Seem more interested in keeping our claim as low as possible in order to keep costs FOR THE OTHER INSURER down :mad: (Feel a bit like they scratch each other's backs.)

We will be looking to switch to another provider in March and are hoping motorists here, who've had accidents or are more clued up about the motor insurance industry, can give a few recommendations/suggestion/thoughts on this topic.

Would like to attempt a more informed choice (regardless of increased premiums) in future.
Thanks

dacouch

Hastings are not a good Insurer.

Did you claim directly off your Hastings policy eg you paid your excess or did you go through the Legal Cover?

colino

The new trick with the cheapo companies, always ready to save every fraction of every penny, is to be online only. That is, they don't send anything out on paper, you have to access everything online. When that goes wrong, and it will, you can only speak to them on a premium rate phone number to correct their faults!
Added to that, there is the "hilarity" of NCBs. Which legit company will accept your print off of the captains online document as proof of NCB? That's right, only one of the captains other companies!

spacey2012

Motorists who have accidents, do get clued up, they very quickly realise claiming someone else's liability on YOUR insurance is a recipe for trouble.
Claiming on the other parties is the best way.
Their fault, their claim, their insurance.

wba31

I got stung by S**ft (type of bird) Cover (they are advertised by Iggy Pop and some puppet) and wanted someone ethical, fair, easy to deal with. I posted on these forums about it and ended up with NFU Mutual.
They are locally based, so living in Walsall I deal with the Burntwood branch, I pay monthly and their interest rate is really low, so despite my premium being slightly higher than comparison sites it works out cheaper over the year. Through comparison sites they wanted this year £200 payment 1 then 11 lots of £100, NFU wanted £100 a month, no up front double payment. They do not charge me for changing the policy (some have £50 admin charges!), only for the difference in premium.
I have been with them for 2 years and I am so pleased with the service that they offer that I will stick with them for as long as possible, unless alternatives get much much cheaper...

InsideInsurance

See the Which? report:
http://www.which.co.uk/money/insurance/reviews-ns/car-insurance/whichrecommended-providers/

In fairness, claims is a very tricky area because how people feel about their insurers is a product of (1) their insurers actions (2) the circumstances of the accident and (3) how the TP act. No insurer can control 2 out of 3 of those elements

Take the classic situation of a roundabout with 2 lanes both of which are marked as going straight ahead. Ph and TP are side by side and going straigh ahead but clip each other. Both say that the other party wandered out of their lane and caused the accident.

This will almost certainly end up 50/50 and both parties are going to be annoyed with their insurers but even the best insurer in the world would have ended on the same result.

Yolina

Been with LV for quite a while - not necessarily the cheapest, however they were good to deal with when my car got bumped by an evil BMW quite a few years ago so I've stayed with them after that - I can usually get them to get reasonably close to quotes from other companies at renewal time, though it was much harder last time.

SevenOfNine

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Take the classic situation of a roundabout with 2 lanes both of which are marked as going straight ahead. Ph and TP are side by side and going straigh ahead but clip each other. Both say that the other party wandered out of their lane and caused the accident.

This will almost certainly end up 50/50 and both parties are going to be annoyed with their insurers but even the best insurer in the world would have ended on the same result.

Thanks for link II, I agree with your scenario above. However, in our case there has been no question that the current eyed, dozy mare, so many metres behind our car you could have fit 10 double deckers into the gap, should have actually noticed our car was stationary & signalling to turn right whilst waiting for the traffic to pass so the manouvre could be completed. Perhaps then she wouldn't have smashed into the back of it! 30mph road, clear, dry - what more did she need.

There has been no excuse for the lazy, unhelpful attitude by our insurer, full responsibility has been admitted therefore they don't need to help or advise us about anything - we're tiresome mosquitos.

...........and the other driver should have gone to Specsavers, "distracted by her child in the back"

eschaton

Avoid Direct Line, not so long ago I would have been recommending them.

After dealing with new cover for my Dad with Direct Line - after sheer incompetence and lies, I cancelled the policy before it started.

They were so bad and untrustworthy that I cancelled my own policy with them that still had nearly 3 months to run. I took the hit on the cancellation/admin fee to get away from being insured by a shower of useless lying and incompetent !!!!s.

Lum

I've had experience of claims with several insurers, so I'll list them here. I'm not going to bother starring out the names either since all these stories are true.

Churchill: non-fault rear-ender claim, refused to authorise the repair for 3 months because they claimed I had not declared the car to be an import, despite the drop-down for vehicle model on their website saying (import) next to the model I chose and me also mentioning it in the various calls leading to setting up the policy. The 3 month delay was due to them wanting to listen to the recordings of my conversations with them, which presumably must be in a giant pile of unlabelled C90s in the basement. They contracted the hire car out to Helphire who took it away after a month saying that they could not reasonably claim the hire cost from the third party given the delay is cause by Churchill. Churchill then promised to get me their own hire car for the remainder of the repair, but what they actually did was hire it out for a week only resulting in me getting an angry phone call from Enterprise and having to pay late fees.

Equity Red Star: Their protected no claims bonus is not worth the paper it is written on, if you have two claims in the same insurance period then protected NCB goes away completely and they act as if it never happened. I had my car stolen&recovered twice within 3 months. I then had a third, non-fault, claim, somebody rear ended me, and they took so long to chase up the other guy's insurance (Admiral) for payment, that I was faced with losing six years no claims bonus. I ended up paying for the repair myself as it was cheaper than losing that additional NCB and fought them for two years to get that money back. I did not receive a penny in interest either.

Markerstudy: Many people say that this lot are crap, I actually had no problem with them when my car was written off. The assessor they sent was friendly, open to negotiation, accepted the printouts of adverts for similar cars and paid out a value that I believe to be fair.

My GF did not have the same luck with Markerstudy however, someone drove into the back of her car, a 1990 Nissan 200SX that had recently undergone a full bodywork restoration, and was heavily modified. They valued it at £850, eventually raising it to £1950 and the remains of the car back. Their explanation for this was that they considered the restoration work to be "routine maintenance" and therefore it doesn't count. We could not even get a replacement shell in similar condition for this price, and in the meantime they had towed the car to bloody Essex, cashed in the tax disk, siphoned the tank and told us we would have to collect the shell from Essex at our own expense. Cost us around £1500 to swap all her running gear into a £2000 shell with a dead engine.

Direct Line: Vandalism claim after someone dropped a brick off a tunnel parapet through my window. They originally wanted to do this as an accident (Which would have meant NCB loss. Direct Line do not remove NCB for vandalism) but accepted my argument that they define vandalism as malicious damage caused by someone who wasn't in charge of a vehicle. They choice of approved repairer was a bit suspect (Evans Halshaw!) but they were happy to let me use my own repairer. The new windscreen cost £1000 and took six months to arrive but that was not Direct Line's fault and they were happy to pay it. Note that although you will not lose any NCB when claiming for vandalism, you will also not gain a years NCB, so you still lose out slightly. Overall though I was happy enough with Direct Line.

I've had a few other insurers over the years but have no experience of their claims process. After my experiences with Churchill and Equity Red Star, I went to Helphire the next two times I got rear-ended.

vikingaero

If you want a good insurer you generally have to pay:

Chubb
Hiscox
NFU Mutual

are a few of them.

Most people don't ask themselves: "Why is my quote so cheap this year from XInsurerX.com?"

Answer because they are shi-ite.