Claiming On Your Car Insurance

If your car is damaged, you must not have any repair work done until you have received authorisation from your car insurance company.

If it is stolen, you should report the theft to the police and details of any property taken along with the car, and then contact your insurance company. In such cases, you shouldn’t expect your insurer to pay out straightaway. The reason you may have to wait a while is because there’s always the chance that the car could be recovered.

Of course, until it comes to the crunch and you are involved in an accident or the car is stolen, there’s no real way of knowing how quickly or efficiently your insurer - or the companies providing cover for other drivers - will process the claim.

What if you’re not happy with the service?

Insurance companies are not obliged to pay out the vehicle value that you have put on your policy form, and a common reason for customer dissatisfaction with insurers is the undervaluing of cars. One such example would be if an accident resulted in a car not being economically viable to repair - an insurance write off - and the car insurer offered £2,500, whereas the owner considered it to be worth closer to the £3,000 mark.

Should such a situation arise, it might help if you can provide items such as service records and receipts for work carried out on the car or for anything that you may have added, such as an expensive audio system or satellite navigation equipment. Even then there’s nothing to say that the car insurance company will alter its original valuation.

If, for any reason, you are less than satisfied with the speed of response or any other aspect of the service, your first move should be to contact the insurance company’s own in-house complaints department.

If you are still not happy with the treatment you receive after that, you can take your complaint to the insurance division of the Financial Ombudsman.

What To Do In An Accident >>