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Insurer refusing manufacturer‑approved repair on a car under warranty
Comments
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Kia Car Insurance is arranged and administered by Wrisk Transfer Limited,
It is a 3rd party white label product. Not provided by Kia.
Wrisk also provide Mini Ins & would bet on many others.
As a long running Kia owner. These co's often provide a voucher to cover you extra excess payment for using a non ins approved co.
Life in the slow lane2 -
£47.64 is about £20 per month more than what you paid .. or £240 per year. Not exactly "a little more", is it? 🤷♀️
Jenni x2 -
Mostly, but I did look through the terms and didn't spot anything that made me see this as a potential issue.
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It did momentarily reassure me, but when I asked them to confirm that it wouldn't create a situation in the future where Kia would reject a warranty claim as a result of this work they refused to guarantee that. Whilst that might be understandable, I go back to not accepting that I should leave myself open to any possibility the warranty is put at risk, when there is a way to ensure that is not the case - a manufacturer approved repair.
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I see what you are saying, but there is a way for my insurer to know that Kia will not void the warranty, to get it repaired by a Kia approved repairer. I accept they potentially can't know if an unapproved repairer will repair in a way to preserve the standard manufacturer warranty, so why are they insisting that cars under the standard manufacturer warranty are sent to a repairer that can't meet this level of assurance?
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To play devils advocate, they can't even say for certain that the Kia Appoved Bodyshop would preserve your warranty, especially if their requirements around where parts are sourced from etc are followed. They havent read your warranty, they havent paid for a lawyer to consider it and nor will they hence they will never guarantee the impact on warranties.
Who is the actual company you are dealing with? My guess is it's a certain broker that has claims handling authority as they're the only ones I know with a fixed price repair deal. Id suggest looking on the Ombudsman website to see how the FOS has ruled on other cases. Certainly some insurers policies state that they will use non-OEM parts and the FOS has gone against them where the insured can prove that would invalidate their warranty however the FOS does hold up policy saying there is an additional excess for going elsewhere.
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I'm engaged with the FOS but haven't managed to find specific examples on this sort of thing, I will look again.
On the excess thing, it does seem massively cheeky to have a clause saying the policy holder needs to cover the cost difference between the repair prices, and then use a fixed price deal (which could be zero if they wanted) to judge the price difference. Especially as the repairer is owned by the same company as the insurer, it's basically an accountancy trick to extort the maximum money out of customer. The term is surely to protect the insurer from additional losses, but if I decided to pay the £7k difference they would be financially better off than if they repaired it at their repairer.
Given I want to speak freely about the insurer and use the terms as I have above, for now I suspect it is best I do not name them.
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On whether using a Kia approved repairer would protect the warranty I think there are two things I would say. The Kia repairer should know exactly how to conduct the repair to maintain the warranty, and Kia UK should know that the repairer will do this otherwise they shouldn't have approved them.
Secondarily your point about the insurer can't know for certain that the Kia approved repairer would repair in a way that preserves the Warranty, the insurer doesn't need to. It says in my policy that if the repairer I select causes an issue, then I have to resolve that with the repairer myself as I selected them. I would be happy with that because my judgement is a repair by a Kia approved accident repair centre that I have been referred to by Kia Accident Aftercare (who I was given the details of when I bought the car from Kia so they are endorsed as an organisation to handle the repair of vehicles under warranty) would carry a very low risk (that I perceive to be basically zero) that the warranty would be negatively impacted.
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Obviously its your choice but without seeing the exact wording or being able to check the FOS db for the firm its going to be a bit of pot luck.
The FOS does generally accept the concept of things being capped at the preferred supplier pricing, its a very common complaint where someone doesnt want their engagement ring replaced and wants the cash but the insurer reduces the value by 40%. There are thousands of cases like this which the ombudsman hasn't upheld but it does require that the preferred supplier can provide a replacement that meets the terms of the policy.
The ombudsman does see a loss of warranty as an issue and a failure to indemnify but it comes down to precisely the terms of both the insurance and the warranty. Blanket no option but to breach the real terms, not the marketing bodyshops do, generally won't go in the insurers favour but the FOS may get the insurer to use their own repairer but with OEM parts if thats the only change required to keep it inline with the warranty.
I can't say how the FOS will balance these two things out, a lot will depend on what the policy wording says, if its clear they won't pay more than £2k for repairs then it probably doesnt look good for you, if its vaguer about not paying more than their approved supplier then its probably slightly better.
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But you are missing my point, a former client for example wouldnt allow any garage to order their own parts, instead they provided all the parts that were required. So your Kia approved repair, if operating under the terms of that policy, would have been sent a box full of non-OEM parts so despite them doing the repair it wouldnt meet the terms unless the terms explicitly state anything done by a Kia Approved Repairer won't invalidate the warranty even if they use playdo in leu of the normal manufacturers part.
Im saying no insurer will ever given an absolute guarantee that any repairer won't invalidate the warranty because they arent getting lawyers to read the warranty and opine on the matter, hence they use generalities. Warranties that become blanket broken for a single repair generally won't be upheld, they can say they want warrant anything replaced not to standard and so some insurers fix it a different way, by saying they will honour the warranty that you would otherwise have had for that part and the rest continues under the manufactures warranty.
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