No Motor Legal Protection and Policy Excess outstanding?

nostrawaggus

I was involved in a minor fender bender with no personal injury beginning April. The other party who was insured with Admiral, accepted blame immediately as we exchanged details.

I'm insured with eSure but upon taking out the policy I did not take out Motor Legal Protection, as this was provided as an option at the time and I thought it unnecessary to do so. I've been a safe driver for years and any incidents I have been involved with have been other people's fault. That was my reasoning anyway.
My vehicle was repaired with an eSure nominated repairer.
The whole incident was quite painless, up until I got my repaired car back.

Problems started really with eSure telling me they would waive my policy excess if I could supply them with the full name and address of the at-fault-party. These details were never exchanged when we had the collision, the only details i had was telephone number and registration details/insurer details from the other party.

According to eSure, this meant I had to pay my policy excess to the crash repairer when I picked up my car after it had been repaired. They provided a receipt for me.

Whilst the claim was being handled, I got sporadic emails from the claims handlers at eSure, who I'd replied to asking if they needed my dash cam footage to help the case. I never received any responses apart from the standard automatic replies.

After some weeks I finally received an email from my insurer that they had confirmation of liability from the other party and that my dash cam footage was not required. Great I thought. Better late than never.
I responded once again asking what the situation was with my policy excess that I had paid to the crash repairer. Again, some weeks went by with me chasing eSure up but never got any further reply from them - until I called them.
Having spent some time on hold, I finally got through, and was told that due to not having Motor Legal Protection, it was up to me to reclaim the uninsured loss directly from the other party (which the policy excess falls under I was told). I was unaware of this little tidbit of information.
The call centre handler gave me the telephone number of a 3rd Party Claims line together with a reference number that I needed to quote.
Due to data protection, he was unable to provide me with any more details, which I thought was odd, seeing I was obviously the at-fault and aggrieved party.

Having called the 3rd Party claims number which turned out to be Admiral, I was on hold for roughly 30 minutes, listening to a recorded message telling me that my call was important. I finally gave up. I tried again the next day and the day after that with similar outcomes.

I did finally manage to get through, and spoke to a claims handler who seemed surprised that I was speaking to him. He gave me an email address for me to send my policy excess receipt to, and told me it wouldn't take very long for resolution. That was 6th July.
I have since not had any further communication from Admiral, or responses from them in relation to my policy excess.

I have even raised a formal complaint using their complaints procedure, which has gone unanswered for other 4 weeks now. They were supposed to respond to the formal complaint within 5 days.

My insurer eSure has since sent me a txt message telling me the claim has been settled and my NCD was not affected.

So the question is, what do I do to get my policy excess back?
eSure clearly aren't interested, neither is Admiral. I am the not-at-fault party and have been left waiting continuously for nothing to happen. Where do I go from here? Help would be appreciated.

many thanks.

ConMan

You need to get onto Admiral. They'll probably request a receipt to prove you paid the excess. Esure have nothing to do with it.

bengalknights

Go directly to Admiral and they should reimburse you

ConMan

nostrawaggus wrote: »

I'm insured with eSure but upon taking out the policy I did not take out Motor Legal Protection, as this was provided as an option at the time and I thought it unnecessary to do so. I've been a safe driver for years and any incidents I have been involved with have been other people's fault. That was my reasoning anyway.

If anything, this means you should have it. People who are crash a lot and are to blame for incidents are probably the people that shouldn't have it.

lisyloo

I am with memonline.
I have no connection and no experience of claiming. They are £10.99 for one car.


I went with them because they have 40 years in the business are regulated by the financial conduct authority, the ombudsman is available and it's a legal contract so you hve some rights (unlike with a no-win no fee company who would probably not take on your case for an excess).

Quentin

Your excess is an uninsured item and not covered by your policy


You always should be prepared to pay it when claiming on your own policy


A simple letter to the third party insurer enclosing proof you paid it, confirming their insured was responsible should get it reimbursed, especially as now your insurer looks to have been reimbursed in full


Also ask to be reimbursed any other costs you incurred over the incident (taxi fares/loss of earnings etc)

nostrawaggus

Thank you for everyone's quick response. I really appreciate it.
I did think it was Admiral who needed to deal with this but the fact that there's no response to my emails... no responses to my formal complaints in their complaints procedure for 4 weeks now.... what is it with these companies? I saw they were voted Top insurer for the 5th year now! Really?
I tend to do things via email so there's a record of things, calling them and spending 30 minutes a time listening to some recorded message that your call is important is hypocritical and I'm just not interested anymore.

The fact that I am not an Admiral 'policyholder' means I can only interface with this 3rd party claim line and the normal Admiral number can't help me as I don't have a policy number per say.

I've started a Resolver case against Admiral (again) and have uploaded the policy excess receipt (again). The fact that no-one replied to any of my previous attempts, especially when you're involved in an incident with one of their drivers, really isn't good customer service.

I'll see what happens with the Resolver case. But this just highlights again that things go wrong when you don't pay for Motor Legal Protection. As ConMan says, from now on I will take this out, there's just too much corner cutting going on in this industry as well as any other in general.

Quentin

Admiral have no obligation to respond to you. Insurers do take time to deal with claims!


Have you sent proof of your uninsured loss(es)?

nostrawaggus

My insurer Esure clean their hands of the case (ie. have recovered their losses), and Admiral don't deem it necessary to respond to me, how am I supposed to get to the bottom of things? I'm not just anyone, I'm the guy their driver crashed into! All they've done by not responding is just created more work as now they have a complaint too! You'd think common sense would prevail and they could at least just acknowledge receipt of my original email which provided them all the info they needed.
And yes, you're right, they've taken their time with it for sure - I was getting worried I may have left it too late.

They've had receipt of the excess paid to the repairer for a month now. I've uploaded it to Resolver again too.

lisyloo

Send them a "letter before action" by recorded delivery.
You can get a proof of posting if you like but i prefer recorded delivery as then I know they've got it.
It will cost you a little to take them to court, but hopefully they will respond before that.
This is unfortuantely how insurance companies work.
They are acting in their customers best interests by trying not to pay out of at least delay.
You are not their customer.



Unfortunately you have to do it yourself as you didn't take the insurance.

nostrawaggus

So the Ombudsman won't be of any use either in this instance?

I had a feeling this may have to go to court when they didn't respond. I'm going to win, no question about that, they have accepted liability etc. so it makes you wonder why to string it out as much.

At this rate I may just tally up the extra expenses that are being incurred.
But at the end of the day, this just hurts everyone who's insured... by them not acting in a timely manner to requests that do actually need to be serviced. They can't honestly expect I'm just going to wave my excess goodbye, do they?

And yes, I will do it myself, for sure. But it just underlines how they try and make money out of each and every one of us with their Motor Legal protection options that most will never use. For those that don't they make life difficult, which is shouldn't be.

Insurance, legalised robbery.