Car insurance claim refused - no 'commute to work' cover

Aretnap

A_Lert said:

Morally you could argue it's sharp practice that insurers are happy to take the money, and only bother checking the customer told the truth when there is a claim.

How would they check whether she drives to work before she makes a claim though? Other than by asking her, which (presumably) they already did at the point of sale. It's not like accident or conviction history where there are databases which they could check either at point of sale or point of claim. 

Norman_Castle

Joseph_Merrick said:

Hi.
My step-daughter has just had an accident in her BMW on the way to work. She was crossing a slippery wooden bridge, the rear wheels span, sending the car sideways then down a bank, hitting a concrete post on the side on the way.

Where is this "slippery wooden bridge". Is it on google maps?

unforeseen

I must admit it does seem strange to get wheel spin like that unless you suddenly become heavy footed.
A wooden bridge? No side walls? 

ellie99

Not much help to the OP, but something else to watch out for.
I recently did my car insurance, went through a comparison site. Made sure I asked for SDP + commuting, the same when I went onto the insurers website. I chose Churchill, and when the documents arrived in the post they were for "SDP", no mention of commuting. I double checked, had definitely asked for commuting. So I phoned Churchill, and was told "commuting is included in SDP". I have never heard of this before, and it seems ridiculous not to say what I'm actually covered for, given the warning to check your documents.
I didn't know whether to believe the guy on the phone so searched for more info. It seems some companies do this
"Churchill and Direct Line said drivers are covered for commutes within their SDP policy definition." is a quote from this newspaper article as an example   https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/11168860/not-covered-car-insurance-commute-work/

In my view this isn't right, your cover should be there in black and white. What's so difficult about saying "&commuting" on my policy when I've paid for it? I don't think I'll be staying with Churchill as I'm not happy about this.

Jumblebumble

Joseph_Merrick said:

Hi.
My step-daughter has just had an accident in her BMW on the way to work. She was crossing a slippery wooden bridge, the rear wheels span, sending the car sideways then down a bank, hitting a concrete post on the side on the way. The car was stuck 3m down and 5m away from the road with extensive damage to the nearside.
She, most importantly, is unharmed, other than shaken.
We called her insurance, 1st Central, straight away to try and arrange recovery and claim for the car. She has been insured with them for over a year, on her previous Corsa, then upgrading the policy when she got the BMW. She explained what had happened to the claim handler then we were shocked to be told that the insurance did not cover her for commuting as her policy only includes social, domestic and pleasure, not commute. My step-daughter had no idea what that meant! She bought the insurance on-line through a comparison site and chose fully comprehensive assuming, as the name implied, that she was fully covered for any eventuality. Apparently not and the insurance are refusing any kind of claim.
My step-daughter is only 23 and while she is confident and deals with most matters in her life without recourse to mum or step-dad, I feel it is unfair of the insurance company to, what I feel is, trick her out of a claim by providing so many different layers of options that there is always a loophole for them. Where is the duty of care? Indeed, at no time did anyone from the insurance company ever ensure the policy was fit for purpose and covered her requirements. Even when she rang at renewal time back in August to switch from monthly payments, to paying the whole policy up front, the call handler again never checked the policy was sufficient, they just took her money and ran.

I am writing this post for 2 reasons:

• For other users, please make sure you have commute cover if you drive to work in your car - we have spoken to so many friends following the accident who had no idea this was 'a thing' and have gone away to check their policies. What would have happened if the accident involved a third party? Would my step-daughter have been liable? Has she in effect been driving illegally all these months every time she went to work? Certainly not intentionally - she loved her car and thought she was 'fully [and] comprehensively' covered.
• For us, do any of the readers think we have grounds to claim against the insurance company, either for mis-selling (the policy wasn't fit for purpose) or for lack of a duty of care in not ensuring it covered her needs? So far we have had to pay for the recovery truck and my step-daughter is now without transport. To make matters worse the car is still under finance so we either have to try and repair it (and my gut feeling is an assessor would have written it off) or she has to pay off the finance in one lump that she cannot afford, and still have no car.

Any help or thoughts would be much appreciated and please, check your policies (and those of your growing up kids)!

Hi 
I will be helpful unlike some posters here who have nothing positive to say  and inform you  It costs nothing to put in a complaint to the ombudsman as the ombudsman has ruled in partially in favour in these circumstances which may help lessen the blow
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/data-insight/insight/insight-in-depth-underinsurance-misrepresentation-non-disclosure

What happened

Mark contacted us after being involved in a car accident. He explained he’d been driving home from work when he’d hit another car.. His insurance company had sent a claims investigator to interview him and were now saying they wouldn’t cover his claim because he hadn’t told them he’d be using his car to commute.

Mark said he hadn’t realised he wasn’t covered for driving to work – and he’d complained to his insurer that his policy documents weren’t clear. But they’d replied to say that they didn’t agree, and Mark had now been told he’d need to go to court for driving without insurance. Feeling he’d been treated unfairly, Mark asked for our help.

How we resolved the complaint

We could see that the insurer had asked Mark what he used his car for: “social, domestic and pleasure” (SDP), “SDP and commuting” (SDPC), or “SDPC and business”. Mark had chosen SDP. And the level of cover was clear on the paperwork he’d been sent.

We asked Mark about this. He sent us documents relating to previous policies with other insurers, where the SDP cover had included driving to and from work. He said he had just assumed his current policy would work in the same way as his old ones. From the insurer’s records, we could see Mark had called to amend his policy immediately after his interview with the claims investigator, which he said was when he’d discovered he didn’t have the right cover.

We explained to Mark that, under the law, people buying insurance need to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation about what cover they needed. He’d been careless in
our view, and should have read the documents he’d been sent.

However, given everything we’d seen, we didn’t believe he’d deliberately tried to mislead the insurer. And there were certain remedies under CIDRA that they should have turned to – rather than saying Mark was driving without insurance and refusing to consider his claim.

The insurer confirmed that if they’d known Mark was going to use his car for commuting, they would have covered him, but charged more. The difference was a few pounds; Mark had paid well over 90% of the correct premium.

We told the insurer to consider Mark’s claim under the policy terms, and to pay any claim proportionately. We also told them to write a letter confirming that Mark hadn’t been driving without insurance, and to pay him compensation (in our “substantial” band) to address the distress they’d caused by initially suggesting he had.

Grumpy_chap

Prompted by this thread, I checked my wife's insurance as she changed jobs so was travelling by train and now drives to work.

Her policy is with AA Car Insurance, and it seems to be similar to the Churchill & Direct Line statement from Ellie above.  The "Certificate of Motor Insurance" reads "Limitations as to use: Use for Social, Domestic and Pleasure purposes only" but in the "Statement of Insurance" it expands that under "Permitted Use: Use for Social, Domestic and Pleasure purposes only including travel TO AND FROM a PERMANENT place OF WORK".

I take that to mean my wife is covered   It may be worth the OP re-checking all the insurance paperwork for the daughter's policy as the cover might be in the depths of the documents and the insurance co. now made a mistake.

I am interested to know what is meant by PERMANENT place OF WORK. My wife has a new job from September, but may still look for a better job. 
If she changes jobs a couple of times, does that simply count as sequential PERMANENT place OF WORK? 
What if she had two employers / two different jobs at the same time?  Could that still be two PERMANENT places OF WORK?

Alter_ego

My wife and I each are named drivers on the others car. We both have commuting to one place of work on our policies.
However neither of us can commute in the other one's car. Hard to understand but I've checked and found it's true.

davidmcn

Grumpy_chap said:

I am interested to know what is meant by PERMANENT place OF WORK. My wife has a new job from September, but may still look for a better job. 
If she changes jobs a couple of times, does that simply count as sequential PERMANENT place OF WORK? 
What if she had two employers / two different jobs at the same time?  Could that still be two PERMANENT places OF WORK?

It means going between home and a regular workplace, as opposed to travelling to e.g. a different client each day, or travelling between workplaces during the day. So two jobs (which you travel to on different days) would be fine.

uk1

My sympathies are with the OP's daughter.  Only because of this thread I realise I have no idea what "social, domestic and pleasure" actually means.  Drving to work is such a pleasure. It does rather feel (to me) more like a cunning way for insurers to avoid cover to the genuinely innocent than anything else and it would be helpful if the relavent authorities issued "guidance" that the default position on policies is that it should cover travel to normal places of work or at least if a questionaire fails to specifically ask then the default is that  it is covered but that youy can have a lower premium if you specifically tick a box stating you won't require it.

k3lvc

Norman_Castle said:

Joseph_Merrick said:

Hi.
My step-daughter has just had an accident in her BMW on the way to work. She was crossing a slippery wooden bridge, the rear wheels span, sending the car sideways then down a bank, hitting a concrete post on the side on the way.

Where is this "slippery wooden bridge". Is it on google maps?

There can't be that many in the UK on public roads
This is one option but given it has a 5mph limit I'd struggle how someone could light up the rears and end up down the banking 
 https://goo.gl/maps/Zr695hAwbRfcwP1b7