Arriva - letter saying we were in an accident in which we weren't?

barneybeagle

Hi there,

My wife received a letter yesterday to say that a third party had made a claim to Arriva (not our insurers) that our car two weeks ago had hit a car in front of us which then caused that car to shunt forward hitting another car.

Well we know for a fact that this is not true. We do not know the time and location of this so called crash, but if it happened I'm sure we would have known about it and also that the front of our car would no doubt be damaged? All in all it is total p*sh!

Anyway the missus phones the number on the letter this morning and having been messed around for 20 minutes at around 14p per minute, she speaks with the first person she had spoken to originally.

Although my wife stressed that we were not there, so it could not have been us, Arriva only seemed interested in knowing that we were denying responsibility for the accident in which they would put forward our reply to this 3rd party representation and we would have to wait and see what happens there.

I'm just wondering where we stand here as it all seems quite vague and we are 100% innocent. We have thought about going to the Police, but not sure what to do. Should we?

My wife asked the person (who struggled with the language) at Arriva who their Underwriters were and the guy told her they do not have an Underwriter? Is this true, are Arriva that big?

We haven't contacted our own insurance company yet, should we do so or just hang fire and see what develops?

I'm quite concerned as a friend of mine was accused of being in an accident sometime ago and he clearly wasn't in the area and it was all cleared up eventually or so he thought, but on insurance renewal it was flashing up as an incident. He had to get in touch with the Underwriter to get it taken off the system completely.

Any assitance greatly received as always.

Thanks in advance.
bb

FlameCloud

Assuming you mean Aviva, then yes, they will underwrite it themselves- they are one of the largest insurers in the world.

If you are at all uncertain that they understood correctly, I would really recommend you write to them and retain copies.

BertTheRaccoon

Aviva love their indian call centres and frankly they are a disgrace and a pain to deal with, yet they keep sending more work out there, madness.

Anyway, it sounds like Aviva must insure one of the other vehicles involved (perhaps the innocent party at the front).

There is presumably a case of mistaken identity here, someone may have given a slightly incorrect reg number to their insurer who has then done a DVLA search with that number and found you. Alternatively there could be a cloned vehicle with your reg plate on.

Respond to Aviva in writing, by recorded delivery saying you have no idea about the accident, you and your vehicle were not involved and that you have no objections to an independent inspection being carried out to your car to establish this.

Although this will cause problems for you at renewal until this is ironed out, it is perhaps best you flag this issue up with your own insurers "for information purposes only" so that if any of the other parties write to your insurers, they are well placed to fend off any crap.

[Deleted User]

barneybeagle wrote: »

Hi there,

My wife received a letter yesterday to say that a third party had made a claim to Arriva (not our insurers) that our car two weeks ago had hit a car in front of us which then caused that car to shunt forward hitting another car.

Well we know for a fact that this is not true. We do not know the time and location of this so called crash, but if it happened I'm sure we would have known about it and also that the front of our car would no doubt be damaged? All in all it is total p*sh!

Anyway the missus phones the number on the letter this morning and having been messed around for 20 minutes at around 14p per minute, she speaks with the first person she had spoken to originally.

Although my wife stressed that we were not there, so it could not have been us, Arriva only seemed interested in knowing that we were denying responsibility for the accident in which they would put forward our reply to this 3rd party representation and we would have to wait and see what happens there.

I'm just wondering where we stand here as it all seems quite vague and we are 100% innocent. We have thought about going to the Police, but not sure what to do. Should we?

My wife asked the person (who struggled with the language) at Arriva who their Underwriters were and the guy told her they do not have an Underwriter? Is this true, are Arriva that big?

We haven't contacted our own insurance company yet, should we do so or just hang fire and see what develops?

I'm quite concerned as a friend of mine was accused of being in an accident sometime ago and he clearly wasn't in the area and it was all cleared up eventually or so he thought, but on insurance renewal it was flashing up as an incident. He had to get in touch with the Underwriter to get it taken off the system completely.

Any assitance greatly received as always.

Thanks in advance.
bb

Hi BarneyBeagle

If it is Aviva that has contacted you, then I will be happy to speak with our claims team and ask them to investigate this on your behalf. I will also ensure that we have recorded your statement that you were not involved in any accident.

To do this, I will need to take a few details from yourself. Could you please email me at social@aviva.co.uk

Policyholders full name
Car Registration
Post code
MSE Username so we can link your email to this post
Any reference numbers given on the letter we sent

As soon as I get your details I will do all I can to help get this straightened out for you.

Kind regards

Dave


Dave Hyam
Aviva Social Media Team

dacouch

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

Aviva love their indian call centres and frankly they are a disgrace and a pain to deal with, yet they keep sending more work out there, madness.

Anyway, it sounds like Aviva must insure one of the other vehicles involved (perhaps the innocent party at the front).

There is presumably a case of mistaken identity here, someone may have given a slightly incorrect reg number to their insurer who has then done a DVLA search with that number and found you. Alternatively there could be a cloned vehicle with your reg plate on.

Respond to Aviva in writing, by recorded delivery saying you have no idea about the accident, you and your vehicle were not involved and that you have no objections to an independent inspection being carried out to your car to establish this.

Although this will cause problems for you at renewal until this is ironed out, it is perhaps best you flag this issue up with your own insurers "for information purposes only" so that if any of the other parties write to your insurers, they are well placed to fend off any crap.

Just announced another 600 UK redundancies to relocate the jobs to India.

The staff are paying for the executives mistakes with their jobs.

They started making redundancies to relocate the jobs to india about 8 years ago. The most experienced staff (Highest wages) went first and they've been working their way down the pay scales ever since.

You can imagine the quality of staff left and their fear for their jobs.

Such a good company once and now a shadow of their former self

BertTheRaccoon

dacouch wrote: »

Just announced another 600 UK redundancies to relocate the jobs to India.

The staff are paying for the executives mistakes with their jobs.

They started making redundancies to relocate the jobs to india about 8 years ago. The most experienced staff (Highest wages) went first and they've been working their way down the pay scales ever since.

You can imagine the quality of staff left and their fear for their jobs.

Such a good company once and now a shadow of their former self

Yep I agree, I am ex NU myself, worked at head office in their claims litigation dept 15 + years ago.

The bean counters that run the show can't take their eyes off the overheads costs at the expense of quality.

As a claimant lawyer, I interface with their claims depts daily and it is so frustrating. Scripted people who are difficult to understand and any technical issues go way over their heads. Components of the claim get fragmented out to different depts and teams, so one handler to deal with the PI claim, one to deal with the vehicle damage, one for the credit hire etc.

I notice the recent shareholders meeting strangely agreed to the executives renumeration paclage.

The destruction this company are also causing to the civil claims sector is also staggering. I'll give them their due, their PR machine works well and whoever their connections to government are seem to be having maximum impact.

According to Aviva Claims Director Dominic Clayden, lawyers should be kept out of the claims process completely and injured parties should be forced to deal directly with the insurer of the party at fault to start with.

Like an insurer can be trusted to deal with a third party in a fair manner when there is no duty imposed on them by any regulator to deal to a certain standard (other than please their shareholders). They can't even treat their own customers properly, let alone a third party who has the cheek to claim compensation from them.

dacouch

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

The destruction this company are also causing to the civil claims sector is also staggering. I'll give them their due, their PR machine works well and whoever their connections to government are seem to be having maximum impact.

I'm not so sure of that, they always make me laugh when they make a big announcement and expect the rest of the market to follow due to their share of the market.

Stop offering DOC

Reintroduce DOC

Stop offering DOC

Reintroduce DOC

Losing money on Fleet so will only underwrite at profitable premiums

Start undercutting themselves against the holding broker at unprofitable premiums

Losing money on Fleet so will only underwrite at profitable premiums

Start undercutting themselves against the holding broker at unprofitable premiums

The above but for P.I many many times

Broker only won't go direct.

Go direct

Join comparison sites

Leave comparison sites

Join comparison sites

etc etc

They also make me laugh how they shaft their direct clients, their broker only policy is far far wider cover than their direct policy.

I once had a client have an accident with a foreign driver, Aviva have a dept for this they informally call "Johny Foreigner". I had no option but to deal with the Indian claims centre and mentioned I spoke to someone in Johny Foreigner dept at H.O. A few days later they rang back as they had spent 4 hours ringing around various Aviva offices asking if there was a member of staff called Johny Foreigner. They were asking me for his extension number

My last business rep made me laugh, recently graduated in History and then joined Aviva as a Business Development Rep. Had absolutely no idea about insurance or developing insurance business although judging by current performance and with that lack of knowledge she could be the CEO of Aviva in no time...

Quentin

Talk about going OT in a thread!

How are you guys dissing Aviva helping the OP?

The advice to the OP is to ignore all the aviva dissing posts in the thread, and pass the correspondence (and all future correspondence) to his own insurer, tell them it's nonsense, and leave them to deal with it, and not stress about contacting Arriva.

BertTheRaccoon

Your advice had already been given in my post #3 above Quentin, so after that it seemed fair game to educate people about Aviva.

barneybeagle

Hello all,

Thanks for the advice and the information. I have taken note regarding AVIVA and what has been said does not surprise me in the least. We have found that it is no good phoning them due to the waiting time followed by being past from pillar to post once you speak to someone. On top of that once you think you are there, the person on the other end cannot understand the basics of what you are trying to put over.

Mr Dave Hyam, apologies for not responding sooner. Can you forward me a phone number by pm so we can maybe speak as with all due respect I do not like to put out our details on a website and I do not know you. Apologies, but hope you can understand my predicament.

We are insured by a company that I found out AVIVA is the underwriter for. They were unaware of this alleged incident, but told me it was not unusual for them to be dealing direct so as it stands they are not in the loop to my knowledge.

The only thing that appears correct in what the 3rd party is claiming is our registration number and make of car.
The person they are claiming I am or know, we don't know from Adam?
The area the alleged incident took place is approximately 250+ miles from where we were on that day.
AVIVA sent an Inspector to check out our vehicle who checked it out, looked under the bonnet, etc and took photos and confirmed there had been no impact or damage.
We sent a letter which AVIVA obviously recieved as they arranged the car inspection, but they did not answer it or comment on anything we said in the letter.
We have now just received another letter from the Third party through AVIVA with the 'description of the person' which does not resemble me or my wife for that matter. They have also mentioned that another person involved in the incident took pictures of all the cars and number plates in which we can see if we wish. In my reply which isn't finished yet, I have instructed them to send on the photographs.
One of the main things that gets me here is regarding the Insured Person and Insured Reg: The Registration is ours, but god knows who the Insured Person is we have previously stated we do not know him?

At the beginning of this saga and after I posted on here, I went to the Police who thought it could be a scam. They instructed me to talk to our Insurers, in which I did and who confirmed that they had heard nothing, but confirmed that Aviva were our Underwriters.

I will in the next week make contact with our Insurers to see if they have been put into the loop. I also want to clarify if this ongoing saga will affect our next renewal which is due around the middle of August.

I feel like putting a claim in to AVIVA myself for the hassle and disrespect shown towards us. Can this be done?

Well I look forward to any comments or advice on how to go forward.

Thanks in advance
bb

Yorkie1

barneybeagle wrote: »

Mr Dave Hyam, apologies for not responding sooner. Can you forward me a phone number by pm so we can maybe speak as with all due respect I do not like to put out our details on a website and I do not know you. Apologies, but hope you can understand my predicament.

Just to highlight that you haven't been asked to post your details on the forum; you've been asked to email the details:

Aviva_company_representative wrote: »

Hi To do this, I will need to take a few details from yourself. Could you please email me at [EMAIL="social@aviva.co.uk"]social@aviva.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Policyholders full name
Car Registration
Post code
MSE Username so we can link your email to this post
Any reference numbers given on the letter we sent