Advice needed! Car accident, disputed liablity and feeling conned!

Quentin

EdGasket wrote: »

Well I beg to differ. From the following website:

http://ask.barclays.co.uk/help/insurance/motor_legal_cover

you see that Legal cover includes Recovery of Excess and help in arranging and claiming back cost of repairs; exactly what I said and would have expected. I would say Albany Assistance did less than 10% of the work involved in this and I had to do over 90% by dealing directly with the TP and their insurers; what Albany should have been doing if they had been bothered.

What is Motor Legal Protection? If you are involved in an accident that is not your fault, you have a legal right to claim back your uninsured losses (losses not covered by your vehicle insurance policy), from the person who caused the accident.
When you take out Legal Cover, we will try to recover these losses for you and should you need to take legal action, we will appoint a solicitor to represent you.
Our Legal Cover provides:

• Assistance in obtaining compensation for personal injury and cover for medical expenses.
• Cover for losses resulting from the accident: ie loss of earnings, phone bills and travel costs.
• Recovery of your excess if you are not at fault for the accident.
• Assistance in arranging and claiming back cost of repairs for Third Party Fire & Theft or Third Party policy.
• 24 hour emergency claims line, 365 days a year.

Conditions apply.

I am interested to hear what other people think 'Legal Cover' includes?

It seems your basic misunderstanding of all this stems from your ignorance of what is meant by "uninsured"

As has tried to be explained to you, (and which your Barclay's quote states), "legal cover" is for recovering losses against which you have no insurance!

Such as your excess.

Albany don't provide "legal cover"!

Quentin

Hoof_Hearted wrote: »

Personally, I think these leeches are just sucking more money out of the system. They couldn't even be bothered to recover my excess (this is not Albany).

It would have been your decision to use this 'leech'.

And if you used a credit hirer/repairer then you should not have paid any excess??

As the previous posts (try to) point out, these companies are not providing uninsured loss recovery.

If you have uninsured losses and a liable party to claim from then you either DIY, use any "legal cover" you have or instruct your own solicitor.

EdGasket

Quentin wrote: »

It seems your basic misunderstanding of all this stems from your ignorance of what is meant by "uninsured"

As has tried to be explained to you, (and which your Barclay's quote states), "legal cover" is for recovering losses against which you have no insurance!

Such as your excess.

Albany don't provide "legal cover"!

Admiral say that each policyholder has £100K of legal cover however when the TP failed to report the incident to their insurers, neither they nor Albany (un)Assistance did anything at all to help me. I had to commence legal action myself against the TP! When I asked about legal cover, as it was a non-fault claim, I was just passed back to Albany Assistance who did nothing.

Surely the 'legal cover' should have appointed a solicitor to deal with this for me? As I was not at fault, I would say that all my losses (damage to my car) were not insured as the TP or their insurers should have been paying for repairs.

This is what Admiral say about Legal Cover:

http://www.admiral.com/policyDocs/ADAN60%201113%20Legal%20cover.pdf

Section 2A states quite clearly that it should cover legal costs to recover from the TP losses for loss or damage to the insured vehicle. How am I therefore ignorant of what it means? It is there in black and white! I was passed over to Albany to recover these costs for me; they didn't and were happy to sit back for months leaving me to drive round in a damaged car..

Quentin

That is your cover for uninsured losses.

Were you only covered for third party not comprehensive?

If you read your cover you will see no mention of albany who do not do legal cover

Hoof_Hearted

Quentin wrote: »

It would have been your decision to use this 'leech'.

Untrue -- esure just passed it on to them. I certainly didn't want it for such a black and white case. I didn't claim for personal injury so nothing to pay to the leech.

Quentin

Hoof_Hearted wrote: »

Untrue -- esure just passed it on to them. I certainly didn't want it for such a black and white case. I didn't claim for personal injury so nothing to pay to the leech.

You must have agreed to withdraw your claim and go with the leech!


You could have insisted your claim was processed by esure in the traditional manner.


Presumably you preferred not paying your excess and not having your NCD (temporarily) impacted etc, otherwise why did you fall in with the arrangement?

Hoof_Hearted

Funnily enough, I am not in the habit of having accidents. Esure passed me on and I just thought that's what happens. They AMC did nothing other than provide a hire car.


Esure deducted my excess from the settlement but I phoned Aviva and they agreed to pay up without quibbling. They said it was unusual that esure didn't pay the whole claim and claim back my excess with everything else.


I honestly don't know why esure used an AMC, especially as I could have hired the same car locally for half the cost.

Quentin

This now sounds like your claim was dealt with by esure in which case they correctly charged you for your excess.

Aviva mislead you by saying it was unusual to have to reclaim your excess. (You don't have cover for this, it's an uninsured loss which you needed to sort yourself)

The leech you refer to looks to have been a credit hire company who were passed your details by esure as an innocent party who might welcome their service with regards to a replacement car. (Not to handle your claim).

You are entitled to a replacement paid for by the responsible third party if you need one. You can hire your own (if you can afford to) then reclaim the cost or alternatively use a leech

OnanTheBarbarian

Insurers pass their non-fault customers to credit hire companies all day long as they earn good commission levels on the back of this. if you have volumes of non-fault punters (which insurers do) the commission levels are nice & juicy. £200-£300 easily for a standard hire, and upto £800+ for a prestige hire. So you can see what then goes on when the hire company are in no massive hurry to bring the hire to an end as they haven't even got past the acquisition cost of the punter if only a week of hire takes place.

The insurers on the receiving end will squeel and put up a fight for the costs, but when it is their turn, they channel their own punters into these hire cars.

The thing with credit hire is that not much is said to the punter by either the insurer or hire co before a bum goes into a seat, or even after for that matter. If people were advised in words of one syllable what they were signing, not many would go ahead with it.

Typical scenario is the non-fault party rings their insurer to report the claim. Then gets given 2 options;

1- Use their fully comp cover and incur their excess and need to claim this back, or;

2 - Be referred to a company their insurers have an arrangement with who will handle their claim for them and not incur their excess. Most people in such situation are going to take the path of least direct cost to themselves.

And the cycle continues..........

Hoof_Hearted

This makes a lot of sense. There is no hurry for me to return the hire car -- I wonder why? The accident management company did not try to recover my excess. I asked them but they said no. I don't really know what they did other than arrange a hire car. Had esure given me a choice I wouldn't have used them. I didn't understand why I was passed on but now I understand -- commission payments.


I am pretty annoyed that the claim has been inflated unnecessarily. OK, there is no detriment to me but the total cost of the claim could have been much less. £430 less for car hire for a start plus the AMC's costs, whatever they are. I didn't claim for personal injury as I was OK after three or four days. Others may have done.


Onan, you are spot on here:


"The thing with credit hire is that not much is said to the punter by either the insurer or hire co before a bum goes into a seat, or even after for that matter. If people were advised in words of one syllable what they were signing, not many would go ahead with it."