Car Insurance ‘Incident’ recorded

Alskimck33

Hello

Looking for some advice. We bought a second hand car Volvo XC40  last year and after a few days it was suffering with intermittent electrical faults. It was an automatic and wouldn’t go into drive. I contacted the third party dealership who were in another part of the country and they told me to take it to a local service centre who after two visits couldn’t fix the problem. Eventually it went to a Volvo service centre where it sat for 4 months and finally it was diagnosed as a fault with a rat that had part chewed a cable at some point making the contact weak - hence being an intermittent fault.

Now the dealership refused to pay saying it happened when I had the car when it was clear it must have happened in storage. They apparently store used vehicles in a barn before they reach the forecourt. Anyway when they refused to budge they said to try your insurance company as the bill was nearly £2k. 

We called the insurance company to discuss but never claimed and months later that said they our policy was now over £1000 a month.  Thankfully this policy was due to expire in a few weeks and we didn’t have to pay. And when we took out a new policy on a different car via a different insurer they quoted us a very reasonable price. But a month later they have just said we need to pay an extra £390 as they have discovered this incident on our files.

How can this be allowed to happen. It was rodent damage not a crash. it also happened before we had the car so it’s not our fault and wasn’t caused by us. We paid for the repair at no cost to any insurance company, so how can they justify increasing the policy and making money out of us without justification.

Thanks

Alan 

cw8825

why would you have called your insurance company to discuss a problem that was caused before you took ownership of the car. I'm assuming that the answer they gave you was the reason you didnt go ahead with any potential claim

By calling you have made them aware of the potential incident which they have rightly recorded

cymruchris

Alskimck33 said:

Hello

Looking for some advice. We bought a second hand car Volvo XC40  last year and after a few days it was suffering with intermittent electrical faults. It was an automatic and wouldn’t go into drive. I contacted the third party dealership who were in another part of the country and they told me to take it to a local service centre who after two visits couldn’t fix the problem. Eventually it went to a Volvo service centre where it sat for 4 months and finally it was diagnosed as a fault with a rat that had part chewed a cable at some point making the contact weak - hence being an intermittent fault.

Now the dealership refused to pay saying it happened when I had the car when it was clear it must have happened in storage. They apparently store used vehicles in a barn before they reach the forecourt. Anyway when they refused to budge they said to try your insurance company as the bill was nearly £2k. 

We called the insurance company to discuss but never claimed and months later that said they our policy was now over £1000 a month.  Thankfully this policy was due to expire in a few weeks and we didn’t have to pay. And when we took out a new policy on a different car via a different insurer they quoted us a very reasonable price. But a month later they have just said we need to pay an extra £390 as they have discovered this incident on our files.

How can this be allowed to happen. It was rodent damage not a crash. it also happened before we had the car so it’s not our fault and wasn’t caused by us. We paid for the repair at no cost to any insurance company, so how can they justify increasing the policy and making money out of us without justification.

Thanks

Alan 

Although you didn't claim, you informed them of an incident. It doesn't matter if it was a crash, a rat, a flood, a fire or a tree falling on the car, it's an incident. Had you not called them, it wouldn't have been recorded. When you take out a new policy they do ask whether you've had any incidents - whether you claimed or not - you have to now say yes. It's possible by saying 'No' that you may get your insurance cancelled - and then your premiums will soar. Different insurers ask different questions - some are more interested in claims that have actually cost money - so at next renewal when you're comparing read the questions carefully, and note the timescales they state (such as in the last 3/4/5/6 years).

https://www.cuvva.com/how-insurance-works/always-report-car-insurance-incident

Alskimck33

cw8825 said:

why would you have called your insurance company to discuss a problem that was caused before you took ownership of the car. I'm assuming that the answer they gave you was the reason you didnt go ahead with any potential claim

By calling you have made them aware of the potential incident which they have rightly recorded

At that point it wasn’t 100 percent the fault was already with the vehicle when we bought or happened during our ownership. It has now been inspected and reported as likely to have been when in storage prior to the sale. 

Smelly_Dog

I made this mistake myself once. Rang them to check I would be insured after my van rolled off the drive and hit a bin lorry. Made it clear I didn't want to make a claim. Sorted it out with the council for £25 for a new wing mirror in the end. Next insurance renewal discovered they had recorded it as an "incident." The moral is never tell your insurers anything unless there is definitely going to be a claim!

cw8825

Smelly_Dog said:

I made this mistake myself once. Rang them to check I would be insured after my van rolled off the drive and hit a bin lorry. Made it clear I didn't want to make a claim. Sorted it out with the council for £25 for a new wing mirror in the end. Next insurance renewal discovered they had recorded it as an "incident." The moral is never tell your insurers anything unless there is definitely going to be a claim!

Awful advice

DullGreyGuy

Smelly_Dog said:

I made this mistake myself once. Rang them to check I would be insured after my van rolled off the drive and hit a bin lorry. Made it clear I didn't want to make a claim. Sorted it out with the council for £25 for a new wing mirror in the end. Next insurance renewal discovered they had recorded it as an "incident." The moral is never tell your insurers anything unless there is definitely going to be a claim!

There are a few former customers I could introduce you to @smelly_dog who had a similar view to you but were caught out after a subsequent incident... one is still repaying a 6 figure sum.

Clearly many that commit fraud get away with it but the consequences for those that dont can be massive.

Smelly_Dog

Yes yes yes..... but then there's the real World. So is it fraudulent if you fix a leaky pipe yourself and don't tell your house insurance company? Is it fraudulent if you knock your motorcycle over and have to replace the wing mirror but don't tell your insurer. Or your mobile phone screen breaks and you take it down the local shop to be repaired but don't claim on your house insurance or even let them know? Or some unknown person walks past your car and scratches it? Rather than notify the insurers you rub it out with a bit of T-Cut. Or you hit a kerb and damage your wheel. The list is endless. Are you really saying that the Insurer should be notified every time? Not in the real World. In the real World you way up the cost of repair vs the impact on your insurance premiums.

chrisw

Smelly_Dog said:

Yes yes yes..... but then there's the real World. So is it fraudulent if you fix a leaky pipe yourself and don't tell your house insurance company? Is it fraudulent if you knock your motorcycle over and have to replace the wing mirror but don't tell your insurer. Or your mobile phone screen breaks and you take it down the local shop to be repaired but don't claim on your house insurance or even let them know? Or some unknown person walks past your car and scratches it? Rather than notify the insurers you rub it out with a bit of T-Cut. Or you hit a kerb and damage your wheel. The list is endless. Are you really saying that the Insurer should be notified every time? Not in the real World. In the real World you way up the cost of repair vs the impact on your insurance premiums.

Many people might decide not to inform their insurance company if they were 100% certain there could be no third party involvement, such as a paint scratch, kerb damage or reversing into you're own gate post. It becomes much more risky when others are involved as in the case of your bin wagon where it's possible/likely that your details have been recorded somewhere.

DullGreyGuy

Smelly_Dog said:

Yes yes yes..... but then there's the real World. So is it fraudulent if you fix a leaky pipe yourself and don't tell your house insurance company? Is it fraudulent if you knock your motorcycle over and have to replace the wing mirror but don't tell your insurer. Or your mobile phone screen breaks and you take it down the local shop to be repaired but don't claim on your house insurance or even let them know? Or some unknown person walks past your car and scratches it? Rather than notify the insurers you rub it out with a bit of T-Cut. Or you hit a kerb and damage your wheel. The list is endless. Are you really saying that the Insurer should be notified every time? Not in the real World. In the real World you way up the cost of repair vs the impact on your insurance premiums.

There are approximately 2,790 complaints to an ombudsman where someone hadn't made full declarations when buying insurance and their policy was subsequently voided/claim declined as a consequence and the Ombudsman sided with the insurer. Clearly there will be a vastly larger amount of cases where the customer accepted their mistake without complaining at all or accepting the Adjudicators decision to not uphold the case. 

Yes, in the real world many people "forget" to mention things they are legally obliged to, just like many people put false information on their CV. That doesn't make it right, acceptable or a good idea. There can be very significant consequences IF you're caught out, at a minimum you end up paying very high prices for your insurance going forward and at worse you have a claim declined and end up losing thousands. 

As soon as a third party is involved you greatly increase the risk you are running as whilst you may think you'll keep it hush hush you have no control what the third party is doing. CUE contains details of both first and third parties so doesn't take much for an insurer to spot you saving you've owned a car for X years and <X years ago a claim has been logged involving your vehicle that you haven't declared. 

The worst case I've seen is a £350,000 fire claim being declined for non-declaration; the Motor claim previously mentioned was less but its money they are having to pay over (last time I was involved in that one £500 a month was being directly taken out their salary and there was a charging order on their home if they ever wanted to move)

Smelly_Dog

The overall number of claims settled, at 2.3 million, also rose 10% on 2022. From: https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/car-insurance/car-insurance-statistics/

That's 0.001268181% of claims ending up at the Ombudsman. Even if the number of rejected claims was ten times those reaching the Ombudsman that's still only 0.01% of claims being rejected. Methinks you are scaremongering.