Well, balls: It doesn't pay to be honest.

[azekeil]

Like a good citizen I told my new car insurers about the incident I had relatively recently, despite not having heard anything from the 3rd party on the matter. The new insurers have to take this at worst case to protect themselves, meaning I've now got an 'at fault' claim against me and my premium has increased by half again. There doesn't appear to be any length of time that the 3rd party has to make a claim within, except that incidents are kept on the insurers shared database for 3 years. So I'm guilty until proven innocent, and may have 3 years with this 'at fault' claim on my record when in reality no one may even claim anything!

Oh, but luckily for me, they're not going to dock my 'no claims' by 2 years (which would actually be pretty bad for my premium).

I should have just kept my big mouth shut until (if) someone squealed about a claim.

Hats off to the New Sales Manager at Admiral though. He spent 30 minutes going through how it all works and made fleecing me an almost pleasant experience.

Comments

[beebyb.livejournal.com]

What bad luck! What was the accident? Any news on the job front?

[mandalorean.livejournal.com]

Same thing happened to me when a girl walked out in front of the car. Police on the scene said I was not at fault and they filed a report saying so. However, complying with the duty of disclosure thing, I told my insurers and lo and behold my premium had increased upon renewal. I was incredibly pissed off as there was no damage to my car and if the girl tried to claim she would have a very difficult case to prove I was at fault. So the insurers wouldn't have paid out anything and as I had already paid for legal cover those costs would have been covered.
I did complain quite strongly at the time and even after having a letter from More Than's complaints debt that they understood and would not increase the premium it still didn't go down, so I complained to the Ombudsman. Didn't get any money from it but had the satisfaction of giving them some grief.

[xidia.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sucks. Honestly, guilty until proven innocent, which can only be proved by the expiration of statute? It might almost be worth taking it to the Ombudsman, the press, Watchdog etc just to make them squirm.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I have emailed the financial ombudsman just in case they are interested in doing something about it. I won't hold my breath.

[easternpromise.livejournal.com]

I suspect they'll argue it's to do with your riskiness to insure having gone up. You should see my insurance premiums after one attempted theft, one 50-50 accident and two non-fault accidents in the last two and a half years. It just doesn't bear thinking about!!!