Car Insurance claim queries and qualms

henrik1971

In May, my wife was out in her Vaux Astra and was rear-ended at some traffic lights. We got the other drivers details, police attended, ambulance attended, etc. and reported it to the insurers (aviva).
The other driver is also insured by aviva.
On the instructions of aviva we took the car to their approved repairers for an assessment (the car is almost 17 years old, still driveable and was mint condition before the bump)
We brought the car away again after the inspection and then waited two weeks to finally be told it was (surprise surprise) beyond economical repair. However they couldn't give us any idea of what money we might receive (if any!).
Because my wife also hurt her neck in the accident aviva also 'activated' the Motor Legal Protection part of our policy and said that solicitors would contact us shortly to act for us and pursue any other heads of claim we might have. TBH, her neck was fine after a few days and she's not had any problems with it since and so we're not hugely concerned about claiming for injury.
Another couple of weeks passed, we phoned to check progress on various ocassions and were held in asuccession of queues, only to be eventually told effectively, don't call us, we'll call you.
About six weeks after the accident they phoned to say they would pay us 'X amount' and they would come and take the car away, or we could have X amount minus £200, but we could keep the car. They also said we would receive our excess as the other driver was at fault. I asked for the offer to be put in writing (email or letter) so we could think about it, but they said that was not possible. Shortly after, we decided to accept X-£200, so that we would not have to rush out and hastily buy a replacement car. Two more weeks pass by and the cheque arrives with no covering letter or explanation for (wait for it) X minus £200, minus £350 which is our excess!! The same day we get a letter from Irwin Mitchell saying the other driver has not admitted fault and the whole thing is now in a formal process. The story goes on, but here are my questions for anyone who knows about these things:

1. Of the four/five times we most recently spoke to Aviva they have told us opposite things in every other phone conversation about whether we'll get our excess or not. How can you believe a word they say?
2. When they are making offers to pay out on a car that is beyone economical repair, whay can't they put the offer with any conditions that might be attached in wiriting?
3. Is it usual to receive a check with no explanation or breakdown attached for an amount that is different to what you were told on the phone?
4. Surely Aviva appointing Irwin Mitchell to act for us against themselves gives rise to a fundamental conflict of interest? I have asked about this on the phone but however I put it they don't understand what I'm driving at.
5. If we are being paid out becuase our car is beyond economical repair, does that mean our insurance gets cancelled? If so they've not mentioned anything to this effect so far.
6. Following on from the above, does this mean the car has been 'written off' and if so, will we have problems insuring it next year? If so, they've not mentioned anything about this so far.

Sorry about the long post. I thought being insured by one of the bigger, better companies would make all this kind of thing less painless.

Cheers.

forgotmyname

The other driver has spoken to a few people who may have told them not to accept liability and dispute it. It happens. The people you spoke to would not have know this at the time.

Sometimes a policy paid out on a write off will end right away. But it depends on your terms and conditions.
It will be recorded as a CAT C or D write off. Some insurers wont like that. But most dont ask.

Your insurer may drop the cover down to 3rd party.

You need to check your terms and conditions and query everything. record the phone call. Most smart phones can do this these days.

InsideInsurance

henrik1971 wrote: »

1. Of the four/five times we most recently spoke to Aviva they have told us opposite things in every other phone conversation about whether we'll get our excess or not. How can you believe a word they say?
2. When they are making offers to pay out on a car that is beyone economical repair, whay can't they put the offer with any conditions that might be attached in wiriting?
3. Is it usual to receive a check with no explanation or breakdown attached for an amount that is different to what you were told on the phone?
4. Surely Aviva appointing Irwin Mitchell to act for us against themselves gives rise to a fundamental conflict of interest? I have asked about this on the phone but however I put it they don't understand what I'm driving at.
5. If we are being paid out becuase our car is beyond economical repair, does that mean our insurance gets cancelled? If so they've not mentioned anything to this effect so far.
6. Following on from the above, does this mean the car has been 'written off' and if so, will we have problems insuring it next year? If so, they've not mentioned anything about this so far.

My claims handling days werent at Aviva so I cannot explicitly talk about their processes/ procedures but most insurers work in fairly similar ways


1) Which claims team are you talking to? Most claims departments are divided into a number of teams, the first response team that field most the calls and deal with setting up the claim. The policyholder claim element that deal with the own damage aspect and a technical team that deal with any third parties involved be that recovering outlay or settling their claim against you etc. In some insurers the second two are combined and Im not sure which aviva operates.

The amount of training each team gets and their amount of experience varies massively. Certainly in my claims days however there was a real hierarchy and the first response guys didnt like disturbing the own damage people and hated having to call the technical team. Therefore they acted as gate keepers and would try and answer the questions without passing the call on, obv it also starts to prove they've learnt enough to move up to own damage themselves etc. Needless to say however that the untrained dont always get the right end of the stick.

Obviously this shouldnt happen and people caught giving wrong advice will be disciplined but it certainly did go on.

Secondly, even though you are both with Aviva they are required to put up chinese walls to avoid the conflict of interests and there will be two separate claims handlers, probably in different buildings, and they are not allowed to simply look at each others files or have informal chats but must engage each other in the same arms length approach as they would any other third party insurer - they do literally write to each other.

Obviously you've been given wrong information over the phone and a complaint should be raised.


2) Laziness I guess, perhaps they dont have a system template for the X or X-200 offer they were giving you and dont feel like dictating/typing out a full letter. Some insurers are the exact opposite and do everything by letter and almost refuse to deal with things on the phone that slows everything down


3) Its usual to receive just a cheque without a breakdown, at least in my experience. Our system defaulted to sending the cheque out directly to the payee in which case it simply came with a compliment slip giving our and your reference (yours if you are a third party insurer or solicitor etc). There technically was a breakdown in terms of OPD, TPD, BI, LOE. LOU but not everyone would guess the acronyms and there was no explanation why we were paying £4,000 for bodily injury and £10,000 for loss of earnings if the amounts claimed were more.

If the handler wanted to do that they needed to change it so the cheque went to them. Write a letter and change the setting so it came to them too. Once they had the two on their desk they could discard the compliment slip, attach the cheque to the letter and send the two out together. Unfortunately being a rush it occasionally happened that you intended to do this but forgot to select one of them to come back to you and so it went straight to the recipient.


4) Irwin Mitchell as a solicitor firm are regulated in their own rights and effectively act autonomously to the insurer. They would be in serious trouble as a legal firm if they did not act in your best interests and were coloured by the fact your insurers both instructed them and were defending the third party.

Behind the scenes they may not get paid as much for handling the claim but if thats the case then that will have been reflected in the fee they've had to pay to get the referral in the first place (of cause its not on a case by case basis but a general marketing fee that is calculated on the estimated number of cases or such)


5) Varies by insurer, though the regulator/ ombudsman is starting to take a line against those that automatically terminate a policy upon a total loss. You do need to speak to the insurer about what you need to do to get it back on the road and fully insured again. It may drop to TPO cover until the vehicles been tested etc


6) Total loss, write off, beyond economical repair are all the same thing - though technically BER is a subset of total loss as there are other reasons a vehicle can be a total loss other than economics. Most insurers will insurer a cat C or D vehicle once its been tested to be road legal but inevitably its value is reduced and so a future total loss would be a lower settlement than a vehicle that hadnt been written off before.

[Deleted User]

henrik1971 wrote: »

In May, my wife was out in her Vaux Astra and was rear-ended at some traffic lights. We got the other drivers details, police attended, ambulance attended, etc. and reported it to the insurers (aviva).
The other driver is also insured by aviva.
On the instructions of aviva we took the car to their approved repairers for an assessment (the car is almost 17 years old, still driveable and was mint condition before the bump)
We brought the car away again after the inspection and then waited two weeks to finally be told it was (surprise surprise) beyond economical repair. However they couldn't give us any idea of what money we might receive (if any!).
Because my wife also hurt her neck in the accident aviva also 'activated' the Motor Legal Protection part of our policy and said that solicitors would contact us shortly to act for us and pursue any other heads of claim we might have. TBH, her neck was fine after a few days and she's not had any problems with it since and so we're not hugely concerned about claiming for injury.
Another couple of weeks passed, we phoned to check progress on various ocassions and were held in asuccession of queues, only to be eventually told effectively, don't call us, we'll call you.
About six weeks after the accident they phoned to say they would pay us 'X amount' and they would come and take the car away, or we could have X amount minus £200, but we could keep the car. They also said we would receive our excess as the other driver was at fault. I asked for the offer to be put in writing (email or letter) so we could think about it, but they said that was not possible. Shortly after, we decided to accept X-£200, so that we would not have to rush out and hastily buy a replacement car. Two more weeks pass by and the cheque arrives with no covering letter or explanation for (wait for it) X minus £200, minus £350 which is our excess!! The same day we get a letter from Irwin Mitchell saying the other driver has not admitted fault and the whole thing is now in a formal process. The story goes on, but here are my questions for anyone who knows about these things:

1. Of the four/five times we most recently spoke to Aviva they have told us opposite things in every other phone conversation about whether we'll get our excess or not. How can you believe a word they say?
2. When they are making offers to pay out on a car that is beyone economical repair, whay can't they put the offer with any conditions that might be attached in wiriting?
3. Is it usual to receive a check with no explanation or breakdown attached for an amount that is different to what you were told on the phone?
4. Surely Aviva appointing Irwin Mitchell to act for us against themselves gives rise to a fundamental conflict of interest? I have asked about this on the phone but however I put it they don't understand what I'm driving at.
5. If we are being paid out becuase our car is beyond economical repair, does that mean our insurance gets cancelled? If so they've not mentioned anything to this effect so far.
6. Following on from the above, does this mean the car has been 'written off' and if so, will we have problems insuring it next year? If so, they've not mentioned anything about this so far.

Sorry about the long post. I thought being insured by one of the bigger, better companies would make all this kind of thing less painless.

Cheers.

Hi henrik1971,

Please accept my apologies for any confusion or concern caused with your wife's claim. I'm not in the Claims team but I know that behind the scenes, (even in claims appearing to be straight forward) there can be complex scenarios which may cause delays or additional questions. It would be down to us to alleviate any concerns and keep you up to date as well as making sure you have all of the correct information you need. This doesn't appear to have happened as well as it should from what's detailed in your post; so again, please accept my apologies for that.

In this situation, I'd like to refer to our Claims experts for you and your wife to look into the points you've raised and get them answered for you.

If you're happy for me to do this, please can your wife email me at social@aviva.co.uk with her full name, date of birth, postcode and claim or policy number. If she can also include a copy of this forum post or your username I can tie the email to this and liaise with our Claims team for you.

Many thanks

Marv
Aviva Social Media Team

magpiecottage

I read the reference to Irwin Mitchell differently to InsideInsurance.

It sounds like IM has been appointed by the OP's side of Aviva to claim against the other driver and has reported that he has not admitted liability (possibly via another solicitor appointed by his side of Aviva).

Either way, Irwin Mitchell is acting for the OP against the other driver, not against Aviva per se. If it went to court, it would be the OP against the other driver, not Aviva v Aviva.

InsideInsurance

magpiecottage wrote: »

I read the reference to Irwin Mitchell differently to InsideInsurance.

It sounds like IM has been appointed by the OP's side of Aviva to claim against the other driver and has reported that he has not admitted liability (possibly via another solicitor appointed by his side of Aviva).

Either way, Irwin Mitchell is acting for the OP against the other driver, not against Aviva per se. If it went to court, it would be the OP against the other driver, not Aviva v Aviva.

I read it the same but the concern is that Aviva will be picking up the bill either way, win or lose, that Aviva would give IM instructions to downplay things, accept low offers, dont run up too much cost.

I disagree that this would happen, Irwin are a massive international legal firm and the consequences for a systemic process that didnt represent the best interest of their actual client (the OP) would be exceptionally damaging to them

henrik1971

Thanks InsideInsurance and Magpie Cottage.

Inside Insurance, your last post hit the nail on the head of what my concern was, that (as far as I could see), Irwin's client was Aviva, not us. I possibly agree with your comment about them being such a large firm and the unlikelihood of them accepting a soft settlement because of pressure from Aviva to do so. However, the issue for me, is when a conflict looks (potentially) fairly obvious as it would here to the man in the street, the companies involved should take extra steps to explain the position to the parties involved and demonstrate a level of transparency that gives the parties confidence in the process. We shouldn't have to hope for the best and put our trust in anonymous people on the end of a phone. This scenario must surely arise constantly. I would think a large insurer would have a standard FAQ or information leaflet explaining how it works to calm people's concerns

Thanks so much for your detailed analysis, it makes fascinating reading to someone peering into the strange world of motor insurance. Thank goodness we only have to make insurance claims a few times in our lives!

rs65

The FCA have rules for handling conflicts.

If I discover one I have an internal procedure to follow and would normally advise the individual by phone and follow up by letter explaining the conflict and how it would be handled. Some are unavoidable.

Did Irwin Mitchell write to you explaining their appointment?

henrik1971

Aviva_company_representative wrote: »

Hi henrik1971,

Please accept my apologies for any confusion or concern caused with your wife's claim. I'm not in the Claims team but I know that behind the scenes, (even in claims appearing to be straight forward) there can be complex scenarios which may cause delays or additional questions. It would be down to us to alleviate any concerns and keep you up to date as well as making sure you have all of the correct information you need. This doesn't appear to have happened as well as it should from what's detailed in your post; so again, please accept my apologies for that.

In this situation, I'd like to refer to our Claims experts for you and your wife to look into the points you've raised and get them answered for you.

If you're happy for me to do this, please can your wife email me at [EMAIL="social@aviva.co.uk"]social@aviva.co.uk[/EMAIL] with her full name, date of birth, postcode and claim or policy number. If she can also include a copy of this forum post or your username I can tie the email to this and liaise with our Claims team for you.

Many thanks

Marv
Aviva Social Media Team

Thanks Marv. Any information or clarification would be gratefully received. Getting contrary and partial information on the phone can be exasperating after you get through the long time in the queue. Something definitive in writing wolud be great.

OnanTheBarbarian

InsideInsurance wrote: »

I read it the same but the concern is that Aviva will be picking up the bill either way, win or lose, that Aviva would give IM instructions to downplay things, accept low offers, dont run up too much cost.

I disagree that this would happen, Irwin are a massive international legal firm and the consequences for a systemic process that didnt represent the best interest of their actual client (the OP) would be exceptionally damaging to them

Yeah but how much is the Aviva contract worth to them?

oscarward

The op experience to a large degree mirrors what my son, also insured with Aviva, encountered when he had an accident recently.

It really makes me laugh watching the adverts on TV about how your personal claims handler will restore your inner calm.

If anything dealing with Aviva made the whole thing more stressful as he never spoke to the same person twice, they never contacted him it was the other way round and they just seemed to do nothing.