Help!!! Car insurers ripping me off

Emilyb1984

Hi, I was wondering if I could be advised on car insurance. My car was involved in an accident almost 3 years ago, accident was caught on dash cam proving I was not at fault, and was also witnessed by 2 police officers. The insurers of the guy who’s fault it was refused to pay out. So our insurance company said we’d have to put it as a fault claim so they could take the other insurers to court. We was promised we would get all our overpayment back. Now the claim has been settled they are refusing to give us a refund on overpayments, which is approximately £80 a month for almost 3 years and our insurance went up on another car by approximately £1300 over 2 years. Is anybody able to advise us, we are getting nowhere with these people.

DCFC79

Have you complained ?

Emilyb1984

Absolutely, but their claims team said they will not budge.

TELLIT01

Next step surely is the Financial Ombudsman.

Emilyb1984

That’s what we wasn’t sure on, ombudsman or small claims. We have all evidence, but if that wasn’t good enough for our refund, will the ombudsman agree with them too, if it was a few pounds I wouldn’t care but we’ve been done out of thousand!!!

pinkteapot

Emilyb1984 said:

Absolutely, but their claims team said they will not budge.

Have you followed the insurer's formal complaints procedure? 

dunstonh

This is best an issue for the regulated complaints process and then FOS.

nyermen

Is it possible the OP's insurer feels they've correctly priced the extra premiums due to the risk profile at that point, and in fact the other party (or their insurer?) is the one potentially liable to compensate?

MalMonroe

Emilyb1984 said:

That’s what we wasn’t sure on, ombudsman or small claims. We have all evidence, but if that wasn’t good enough for our refund, will the ombudsman agree with them too, if it was a few pounds I wouldn’t care but we’ve been done out of thousand!!!

This sentence "our insurance company said we’d have to put it as a fault claim so they could take the other insurers to court" doesn't make sense. Do you mean that you had to say it was your fault? I would definitely have baulked at that. How come the person who WAS at fault was able to dictate terms and conditions? If you stated it was your fault, that will have detrimental consequences for you going forward with car insurance.

I agree with others who say that you should complain, strongly and in writing, to your insurance company. And after you have received their 'final letter' - which could be by email or snail mail - go to the Financial Ombudsman. That will cost you nothing. It will also take time but it will be worth it in the end when you get your money back. 

Raising a court case will cost you where as the Financial Ombudsman won't.

You can fill in an online form on the Financial Ombudsman's website. You can also read all about what they do, it's all in this link -  https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

Emilyb1984

Basically our insurers said, for them to be able to take the other insurers (guy at fault) to court it has to go down as a fault claim. Which did baffle me. But they put in writing that once it had been settled we would get all monies back, we even had to pay the excess fee!!! Now they have got the money back through court,  which was £24,000. They are refusing to refund our increased fee. Which is approximately £80 a month. Was £30 a month but went upto £118 a month after the fault claim was added. The fact this was all caught on dash cam and we have police officers to the side of us, who witnessed the whole thing, how the fault insurers got away with not paying till court is beyond me. It was only settled last month. So in our minds we have :

32 x £80 increased payments
1 x £500 excess 
1 x £1300 increase on another policy

so about £4360. The money they got back was for hire car bill and the payment we received for our car being written off. Hope this makes sense.

greyteam1959

But have you made a formal complaint or just blathered on by telephone ??