A mechanic from my local garage was driving my car to his premises when he skidded on ice and collided with another vehicle. There was considerable damage to both cars and the mechanic reported the incident to his insurers, LV. He was, in fact, put through to accident management company ClaimCare.
ClaimCare appointed another firm, The Car Repair Network, who told my mechanic to take my car to an appointed garage for inspection. The garage owner had received only vague details about the claim from the insurer so I called LV and discovered that, although it had a record of the incident, it had few details and no idea of who I was.
Three weeks after the accident, my car was finally booked in for repair and I was given a courtesy car. After five days of silence I called the garage which said LV should have informed me that the car was beyond economical repair. So I rang LV who said I could have the car back unrepaired and receive £3,298 and carry out my own repairs or I could have £4,550 and it would keep the car.
I was unhappy with the valuation and was promised a call back to discuss it but this never came. I eventually rang to chase it up and was told no one could discuss the case with me because I was not the policyholder.
I am now left without a car and have been given no further details of how to claim my insurance payout. GS Keighley, Yorkshire
This saga highlights the problems when multiple companies are involved in handling a claim. The idea is that delegation to third parties speeds up the process; in reality, if the companies don’t communicate with each other it leads to an impasse.
Because the mechanic was insured through a broker and the broker uses a management company to handle claims and that company appointed another firm to arrange the repair and courtesy car, you found yourself dangling at the end of a long, limp chain.
LV blames a delay in ClaimCare passing on the details of the accident, although the latter had previously read out to you the report it had submitted to LV a day after it happened. It admits, however, that when it did look at the information, it wrongly supposed you had been hit by a car insured by LV, which caused more delays. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to customer services to amend its records after you repeatedly contacted them.
Only after my intervention do you receive the £4,550 – a figure arrived at, according to LV, by factoring in the age and mileage of the vehicle and comparing three industry price guides.
“Having reviewed the case, we feel that it was not handled to our usual high standards and there were several occasions where we could have been more proactive in handling the claim,” says a spokesperson. “We have reviewed our processes to ensure this does not happen again and by way of apology we have offered [GS] £250 which he has accepted.”
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