VW Ensurance - Any Experiences?

command

Hi, has anyone here used the free Ensurance covers offered by the volkswagon group? Is it worth calling them first in case of accidents or own insurance company is the better option?

Quentin

They say you just need call them (Ensurance) and they will liase with your insurer saving you the need to contact them yourself.

command

Is there a catch?

anotherbaldrick

No . They will liaise and put you in touch with a VW approved repairer if you wish and have the repair estimate approved by your insurer . They will also keep in touch and check that the repair is done to VW standards and in sensible time. Best tell your insurer of an issue first and mention you will be calling in Ensurance.
That's how it worked for me last year when a tile blown from my roof landed on the bonnet.

dacouch

There's not real catch, it's a way of VW of capturing customers who need accident / theft repairs to their vehicle for the VW dealer network.

The benefits for you are one point of contact and using the VW dealer network for repairs.

Be aware that some Motor Insurers will charge you a higher excess if you do not use your car Insurers preferred repairer which is unlikely to be a VW dealer. It may be worth checking whether your own Insurer charges a higher excess and if so whether Ensurance will pay the extra excess i you use them.

If your accident is non fault, it's likely Ensurance will put you in a like for like hire vehicle under a "Credit Hire" agreement. Some people do not like these as they significantly increase the overall cost to the other Insurer which ultimately gets passed onto their customers.

I've not read through all of the Ensurance information but I would assume if you sign up for it that if when you have an accident that if you decide to you can use your own Insurance or even the other parties Insurer to claim from instead of going through Ensurance.

facade

The catch is generally quite a high excess with the "free" insurance.

(It isn't free, you are paying for it in the price of the car, but they won't give you a discount if you don't have it).

rs65

facade wrote: »

The catch is generally quite a high excess with the "free" insurance.

(It isn't free, you are paying for it in the price of the car, but they won't give you a discount if you don't have it).

It isn't free insurance - its an accident management service.

jec1973

Its basically a con to get you to use VW main dealers for repairs and it doesn't work. My wife had an accident in her up and called them and whilst they did arrange an initial recovery, the following morning they decided they were going to handle it because it looked like it might potentially be a write off, and said we had to contact our insurers, we then got calls from Allianz asking for payment for the recovery but they refused to say what the payment was for and claimed we had called them direct. It was absolute chaos, fortunately we are with Admiral car insurance and they got on the case, took over and are now sorting it all out.

Forget their claims of "one call, 24 hour claim handling etc etc", they are only interested if its minor damage. ( the car hasn't been written off, btw, its still waiting to be assessed)