Car insurance settlement

dan_wise

Hi,

I was involved in an accident last Tuesday (my fault). Car has been deemed a write off basically from the guy I spoke to at the garage last week, his words "this amount of repairs is above my pay grade to approve so start looking for another car."

This week I've had two messages from the garage saying the same thing: "We are still awaiting authority from engineers. We will contact you later in the week with further updates."

Reading the reviews of eSure on trustpilot fills me with dread, they seem reluctant to pay out at all and are still in the business of issuing cheques that mysteriously get lost in the post or the name is wrong when it does arrive.

All of this is causing me great anxiety. Is there any way I can move this process along faster? I need a swift resolution to this, I can't afford to be stuck in limbo for weeks or months.

Car_54

Why are you talking to the garage, rather than to esure? It is the insurer who will be making the decisions.

Goudy

Probably not much.
The garage have done their thing and provided an estimate to your insurance's claim handler.
Your insurance company's claims handler may or may not be happy with it and might decide to send an appointed engineer to have a look.
They might be happy and just send the estimate to the claims handler with a recommendation to repair/write off.

Once you get past this, they will either arrange repair or if it's uneconomical to repair, write it off and make an offer.
They will probably want to discuss things with you before they do that and may ask you for certain things.

You'll now get a name of someone handling the claim at it's at this point you might speed up the process.

Take the name down and ask for a direct number or email.
Try not to get frustrated with them, be pleasant and try and help them along with anything they need.
You need to remember they probably aren't just dealing with your claim, that one person is likely handling dozens all at the same time, so any contact with them make sure you quote your policy number and if they use one, a claim reference number.

If they want things posted, ask if you can scan and email them, make sure everything is marked with those numbers.

If they want to settle and you agree with the figure, ask them to transfer the money into your bank account rather than send a cheque.

DullGreyGuy

dan_wise said:

Hi,

I was involved in an accident last Tuesday (my fault). Car has been deemed a write off basically from the guy I spoke to at the garage last week, his words "this amount of repairs is above my pay grade to approve so start looking for another car."

This week I've had two messages from the garage saying the same thing: "We are still awaiting authority from engineers. We will contact you later in the week with further updates."

Reading the reviews of eSure on trustpilot fills me with dread, they seem reluctant to pay out at all and are still in the business of issuing cheques that mysteriously get lost in the post or the name is wrong when it does arrive.

All of this is causing me great anxiety. Is there any way I can move this process along faster? I need a swift resolution to this, I can't afford to be stuck in limbo for weeks or months.

eSure payout over 98% of Motor claims and the 2% will include claims where there is an allegation their insured caused an accident which they deny, when someone tries to claim for a mechanical breakdown, fakes a loss to make a fraudulent claim or gave lies when buying the policy. So not sure where you are getting the "they are reluctant to pay out" from. 

Most cases are clear cut on if its economical to repair a car or not but there will always be come that are borderline and so an engineer (either in person or remotely) will have to make the decision on if to authorise repairs or total loss the vehicle. If it's an in person thing then obviously it takes a bit longer, our engineers used to visit our network repairers 1-2 a week but maybe a bit less in the much more remote corners of the country/islands etc. 

For most insurers a total loss takes 2-3 for settlement but it does depend on how busy they and repairers are plus if they require documents to be sent in before settlement or not (obv if they do then the timeline is in part driven by the customers speed of response)