Let down by AXA who didn't represent us in court

JLP1976

Its really interesting to hear that someone else was in the same situation. I sat on hold for over 30mins today but then had to hang up as I had an appointment. Thats an hour sat on hold in the last 24 hours. I have a morning off tomorrow so will sit on hold again.

I was looking online at their regional offices and have an inclination to just turn up at the nearest one!

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply everyone. 

MalMonroe

JLP1976 said:

This is all we received, no court date mentioned. And I am very sure that there isn't a problem with the policy as this is an email regarding the claim back in November 2020.

 I write in relation to the above dated incident, and further to your correspondence.

I can confirm that I have made contact with the third party insurer, explaining that they should not make any further correspondence to you as we are dealing with it on your behalf. However, if they fail to ignore this request, and they continue to send you correspondence, I would ask if you can send us a copy of the correspondence and we will deal with it for you on your behalf.

If the third party insurers proceed to issue proceedings, we will appoint a solicitor to act on our behalf. As liability is disputed, and the matter proceeds to court, then the driver of our vehicle will need to attend court in order for us to defend this matter. It will then come down to the judge to determine the liability.

 

Hi, I'm just a bit confused here because shouldn't somebody have asked you to answer this claim? Where is your rebuttal?

Did the court just send this or did it come from the insurance company? By law the court should have sent it to you and not AXA, which it seems they did. 

I mean, that's quite a claim there and it's very specific. No wonder they were awarded the money if you didn't have the chance to argue any case. It appears that nobody has disputed anything the claimant said. I bet they're laughing up their sleeve. No contest.

What I'd have done on receipt of this piece of information would have been to phone the court and ask what I had to do to contest this claim, I would not have left it to AXA because they weren't the ones being sued. If you get a CCJ it won't affect them.

AXA should have actually appointed a solicitor, instead of talking about doing it because they are an insurance company, not a firm of solicitors. You can sue them just on that point. 

The problem seems to be that this claim was left unanswered and unargued because you were not informed that you needed to answer it and also, you were not even advised of the court date.

Would it be possible for you to send an email to the court advising that you were not asked to answer the claim and also that you were not advised of the court date? That is, independent of anything AXA may or may not tell you to do? 

You could at least do that, it's worth a try. And then try hanging on the phone for AXA. But I'd definitely tell the court that communication broke down and you were not at fault. 

I had dealings with a court when I was going through an employment tribunal and they ARE approachable. 

Sandtree

MalMonroe said:
Did the court just send this or did it come from the insurance company? By law the court should have sent it to you and not AXA, which it seems they did. 

I mean, that's quite a claim there and it's very specific. No wonder they were awarded the money if you didn't have the chance to argue any case. It appears that nobody has disputed anything the claimant said. I bet they're laughing up their sleeve. No contest.

What I'd have done on receipt of this piece of information would have been to phone the court and ask what I had to do to contest this claim, I would not have left it to AXA because they weren't the ones being sued. If you get a CCJ it won't affect them.

AXA should have actually appointed a solicitor, instead of talking about doing it because they are an insurance company, not a firm of solicitors. You can sue them just on that point. 

The problem seems to be that this claim was left unanswered and unargued because you were not informed that you needed to answer it and also, you were not even advised of the court date.

Would it be possible for you to send an email to the court advising that you were not asked to answer the claim and also that you were not advised of the court date? That is, independent of anything AXA may or may not tell you to do? 

You could at least do that, it's worth a try. And then try hanging on the phone for AXA. But I'd definitely tell the court that communication broke down and you were not at fault. 

I had dealings with a court when I was going through an employment tribunal and they ARE approachable. 

By law a claim can be issued to your appointed legal representatives and doesn't have to be presented directly to the defendant. As their insurers Axa are the legal representatives. The OP however has obscured the serving address and so its pure speculation as to if it went to Axa or them. 

Axa's claim's department will include a litigation team that are qualified solicitors and barristers, you'll note the service was done by Direct Line Group's Legal Services at their Bromley head office. Insurers will decide on a case by case basis if to appoint external council or use internal, if their customer is claiming personal injury then its more often external. 

Courts are approachable but telling them its someone else's fault doesn't get you anywhere by email/phone. There is due process to have the judgement set aside which includes a fee and a hearing to decide if it should be. Assuming the claim form was forwarded to Axa and its Axa that has messed up then its Axa that will sort it out and inevitably give the OP a reasonable amount of compensation for the stress the situation has caused. 

JLP1976

Thanks that is all helpful. I have clearly put too much trust in AXA but its rumbled on for 4 years without going anywhere so it all seemed very routine and to just keep passing things on to AXA as they said to do. They were very determined to fight the case as what was said was untrue. Then suddenly we got this out of the blue. I still don't know what the other person is claiming for but in my clearly biased opinion they are just looking to cash in. She was driving recklessly, flashing and beeping then overtook as my husband went to turn right, going into his side. Our car was written off, hers needed some minor repairs.

She was highly abusive and we went out of our way to placate her, going to her home with proof of ID as she insisted and my husband didn't have his driving licence on him. Again, not relevant but I feel that for an incident caused by her temper, where we came off much worse, the court thing feels like the final nail in the coffin! Not that anyone ever said the world was fair!

I finally got through to AXA after 50mins on hold to be told they were now closed and someone will ring me back tomorrow.... I said it was urgent and about a failure to represent in court.  Fingers crossed they actually do.  Have also continued to email every AXA related address I have every day. 

Thanks again. 

JLP1976

And apologies for rambling on about fault, I appreciate it isn't really relevant at this point, I'm just bitter!!

Sandtree

JLP1976 said:

 I still don't know what the other person is claiming for but in my clearly biased opinion they are just looking to cash in. 

It says on the form what they claimed for but by "they" it is almost certainly their insurer's claiming given the only loss is vehicle repairs.

JLP1976

Sandtree said:

JLP1976 said:

 I still don't know what the other person is claiming for but in my clearly biased opinion they are just looking to cash in. 

It says on the form what they claimed for but by "they" it is almost certainly their insurer's claiming given the only loss is vehicle repairs.

I thought there was a reference to the claimant suffering financial losses?  I have been on hold to AXA since 9am this morning (now 11.45am and still going)  I briefly got through to someone but they didn't have access to the right system.  Will I end up on hold for another 50 minutes I asked, not at all they reassured me - correctly as it turned out to be much longer.  My stress levels are rather high!

Sandtree

JLP1976 said:

Sandtree said:

JLP1976 said:

 I still don't know what the other person is claiming for but in my clearly biased opinion they are just looking to cash in. 

It says on the form what they claimed for but by "they" it is almost certainly their insurer's claiming given the only loss is vehicle repairs.

I thought there was a reference to the claimant suffering financial losses?  I have been on hold to AXA since 9am this morning (now 11.45am and still going)  I briefly got through to someone but they didn't have access to the right system.  Will I end up on hold for another 50 minutes I asked, not at all they reassured me - correctly as it turned out to be much longer.  My stress levels are rather high!

These are the joys of subrogated rights... the insured sustains a loss, the insurer picks up the cost of that loss and in doing so steps into the shoes of their insured and inherits the right to sue the at fault party.

The loss is the damage caused to the vehicle which is proxied by the cost of repairing the vehicle.  

JLP1976

Call back at 9am following my hour on hold yesterday, 3 hours 23 mins on hold and just off that call where the outcome was to give me a different email address to try.

Sandtree

JLP1976 said:

Call back at 9am following my hour on hold yesterday, 3 hours 23 mins on hold and just off that call where the outcome was to give me a different email address to try.

Well, we can tell who you wont be renewing with then!

My experience of technical claims teams, the sort that need to deal with this type of issue, is that many are very reluctant to deal with inbound calls from customers. My very first project after leaving claims was looking at employee retention within the call centres and the biggest grief we got on the project was that the technical claims teams arguing they shouldn't be included in the project as they aren't "call centre". Personally liked talking to customers but not enough to field the calls for all 300 of my colleagues.