Hastings, Albany and Acorn retracting buy back offer from my written off car!

danii2522

Long story short, I was involved in a non fault accident 3 weeks ago, I was hit by a car at a junction when my car was stationary. All went through my insurance, Hastings. Who then passed my claim off on a company called Albany (without informing me) who make a massive !!!! up over the hire car and I ended up waiting a few days, losing days of work due to it. They then wrote my car off as a cat d. Albany then passed this claim onto another company called Acorn to give me a valuation. They called me, offered me £3700 for my car and the option to buy it back at £444. I said I did wish to buy my car back but would like them to review the valuation as I believed my car was worth more. They told me this would get passed back to Albany. Fine.

In the mean time I took my car to my local garage who took it apart to look at it (something to do with the wheel axel being bent) and started getting the parts in etc to fix it.

A week went by and I hadn't heard anything so I contacted Albany who informed me they had passed this claim back to Hastings!!

Contacted hasting and some very rude and unhelpful guy on the phone informed me that acorn should never have offered me the option to keep my car and that now Hastings we're dealing with it again (despite me recieveing a letter saying that they would no longer be involved) I would not be able to keep my car. I explained the suituation to him and said I was given this offer and I will not accept any less. His reply was 'well I will email the engineer department but I am telling you now, they will say no' and I have heard nothing since.

But I have had an email from Albany telling me to hurry up and sort it as they want the hire car back.

I am fuming with this suituation. I was told that Hastings had washed their hands of me as it was a non fault claim and at no point was I told this would be passed back to Hastings not that having this passed back would result in the offer of buying my car back be revoked.

Are they allowed to do this? Considering I went ahead and started repairs on my car after being told I could keep it, I am not in the position to now go 'ok you can scrap it!'

Any advice would be greatly taken, Iv had enough!

Mrs_Imp

Write a letter.

Set out in the letter what happened and who said what. Make it factual and courteous.

Then set out what you would like to happen, ie you get the insurance money of £x and buy your car back for £y.

You can then either send it to the company and hope the complaints department deal with it, or find out the name of the managing director, or someone else high up, and send to them.

No more phone calls, as it sounds as though you need proof of what has been said.

eta, I'd probably write to all of the companies.

danii2522

Hi, thank you

Luckily I kept a written log of what was said on what days and by who. I have emailed all emailed addresses including complaints departments from all 3 company's that have dealt with this. So far I have only heard back from Albany telling me to hurry up as they are paying for the hire car. So now I am worried they will take that from me.

Are they allowed to do this without informing me?

BeenThroughItAll

danii2522 wrote: »

Hi, thank you

Luckily I kept a written log of what was said on what days and by who. I have emailed all emailed addresses including complaints departments from all 3 company's that have dealt with this. So far I have only heard back from Albany telling me to hurry up as they are paying for the hire car. So now I am worried they will take that from me.

Are they allowed to do this without informing me?

WRITE. A. LETTER.


It seems these days people are allergic to putting things on paper, but in my experience it is far more likely these days that a physical piece of paper will be attended to than one of probably many thousands of emails received each day.

AdrianC

I wonder if somebody misheard "Cat B" as "Cat D" during a phone conversation...

Whether that's the explanation or not, they're under no obligation to offer it you back, for any price, unless it explicitly says so in your policy Ts & Cs. Which it won't. But feel free to check anyway.

danii2522

It's definatly cat d, the damage is minimal, the repair estimate was extortionate so they wrote it off as being uneconomical.

I understand that they are under no obligation to offer me anything. But the 3 rd part company that Hastings paid to deal with my claim dos offer me retention of the car, Hastings have since told me that they don't offer that so won't honour it. How can they pay a company to make me an offer then change their minds?

AdrianC

Simple. That's just an irrelevant part of what they're paid to do. It makes no difference at all to Hastings if the claims handlers sell the car back to you or on to Copart or whoever.

danii2522

So why are Hastings now getting back involved. And why was all of this done in the back ground without me being informed that Albany passing this back would completely chnage the suituation?