Insurance is evil

Had a look at the assessor's notes after he looked at my 7-week-old bike.
After side stand he had written "paint $20", and after the centre stand he
had "paint $20". The side stand sustained a little bit of damage, so OK,
but the centre stand has a nasty scrape taken off a corner. So I phone the
insurance company to ask what it all means. Nope, sorry, can't do. I
have to phone the assessor directly, and talk with him, as my dispute is
with the assessor and not the insurer. I get his name and mobile number,
and phone him.

Very quickly the tone turns a bit nasty. I say I don't want the
side/centre stands just painted, and correctly or incorrectly suggest they
be replaced. I back this up by saying it's a 7-week-old bike, and just
painting is not enough. "Why the bloody hell do motorcyclists think that
everything that's damaged in an accident has to be replaced with a new
part?" are his words in reply. I ask him about the "paint $20". His
explanation is that the assessment form is quite small, and that it should
say "restore and paint" but there is not enough room. He says any repairer
would not take the word "paint" as just get the thing painted and put it
back on the bike. I ask him to phone the repairer and make this explicitly
clear. He says he will. I write this in a letter to the insurer.

Then the insurance company sends me a statement asking me to pay the
excess. I phone and ask why, as I'd supplied the contact details for the
party I'm alleging caused the accident. What I'd done was give the name of
the entity, and not the name of a flesh-and-blood person working for the
entity, so the action had stopped and the insurance company deemed that I
was at fault. The drone on the phone said the instructions to provide the
proper details were on the information sheet. I went through the
information sheet with her and they were not there.

This is all on top of the insurance company insisting that I provide the
results of a preliminary breath test taken at the hospital after my
accident. I'd stupidly started filling out the insurance claim form before
reading it, and provided details that I was breath-tested at the hospital
by a doctor. The result was negative, no blood taken and no police called,
and the result was not recorded on my admission sheet as the hospital is
not legally required to do so. But the insurance company insisted I had to
get the hospital to work out how the hell they were going to provide this
information (they'd never had this request before and had no procedure in
place to handle it), chase up the admitting intern (who was just filling
in at the hospital before Christmas and had moved on), ask him to recall
what had happened five weeks earlier, and get a letter sent to the
insurer. No matter how much I argued that the PBT taken at the hospital
had no legal standing whatsoever, they still insisted that I had to
provide it, or else the claim would not be processed.

Eight weeks later after a minor accident with less than $1.5k of damage,
repair work finally begins on my bike. If the timing was right I'd pay for
the whole thing out of my own pocket and bypass insurance altogether. It
has been an eye-opening exercise.

-sanbar

 

Fact of life. Insurers make it easy to take your money, and then put as
many obstacles in your way as they can when it comes to paying out.
That is their business model.

David

 

The one time I've had to claim, with Western QBE, they paid out
with nary an argument. I'm still getting my insurance from them,
many years later. I wonder why.

It's not actually in their long-term interest to rip you off.

-----sharks

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:40:37 +1100

OFten the problem is the assessor, not the company as such.

Many years ago, a share house I lived in got robbed. The assessor looked
at the bikes[1] and decided we were a "bikie gang"[2] and wrote a bunch
of the weirdest things about us, clearly trying to imply we hadn't been
robbed at all, and were probably criminals anyway.

We got a please explain from the insurance company. As I worked in
town at the time I was picked to front up and try and get it sorted.
Armed with letters from each household member listing places of work,
job title, degrees held, security clearances etc[3] and objecting to
the libellous report, I gave our side of it. They finally agreed the
assessor had a screw loose and paid up. We did insist our answers in
writing to the allegations were put in the file though.

Zebee

[1] a BMW, a Ducati, a Laverda, a couple of Yams, a dirtbike, a racing
sidecar, and the 'Orrible 'Onda Chop, which was probably what gave the
idiot his ideas.
[2] Some patch club we made, with a bike collection like that!
[3] we scrubbed up almost decent when we tried

 

You think ?

There's only a small pool of insurers in Oz, most people rarely claim
more than a couple of times in a lifetime (hence the no claim bonus
thing), if you change insurers every time they piss you off by by not
paying a claim, they're still only churning a small percentage point,
and they're probably gaining a pissed off customer from another insurer
for everyone they lose.


JL

 

I can tell a story of an assessor who with held the payment authorization
(which is supposed to go to the insurance company after the repairs are
done) ,because the repairer didn't buy parts from him to do the repairs .
He has ,besides his assessors business a mobile automotive airconditioning
repair business .
The repairer who paid for all the parts to get the job done was $22,000 out
of pocket for 8 months ,before I complained to the insurance company and
told them what was happening.
Needless to say the assessor is not doing much business as an assessor
anymore .
But I'm not telling that one

Further , I had a big off about 18months ago and wrote my bike off ,(and
myself almost ) , put a claim into Swann and they were very good with the
whole business , but the payout was held up by the police as they were
dragging thier feet with the blood alcohol test , apparently in the NT , the
blood test is processed by a laboratory contracted to do such tests and can
take up to three months .The insurance company paid up only after the test
results were faxed to them after 8 weeks .

 

I've had two not-at-fault claims thru Western QBE, had no problems at all,
and still have my bike & a couple of cars insured with them.

I do think, however, that if an insurance company thought it would have a
reasonable chance of ripping you off it would give it at least a token go.

 

Likewise here, just picked up the bike from getting fixed. Bike shop did a
quote. Took it to the assessor who looked at it and approved it on the spot
(including the exhaust which wasn't listed on the policy). All new parts
were ordered and when they arrived I dropped it in for 2 days to get it all
done. They even replaced the tank which the bike shop was pretty sure they
wouldn't as they reckoned it was existing damage (3mm x 1mm scratch).

All in all a very happy and painless operation. Bike was only out of our
possession for 2.5 days in total and has come back looking better than
before the crash.

 

Oh, they put up a token argument, just so I didn't think they
were easy, but accepted a police report filed the next day which
was entirely vague about where exactly it happened ...

They then almost sold the bike off at auction even though I'd
(foolishly) elected to buy it back off them, but we sorted that
out in the end.

-----sharks

 

Not in their long term interest to hand out money each time a claim is
made either, if they did that they would be broke.

 

Right on the money.
cheers
pete

 

Way too much power is held by assessors.
There are some who know their stuff, but others...

Bought a bike (sight unseen) at a Tassie auction, labelled a "repairable
write-off".
A 2 minute inspection revealed massive cracks in the frame (alloy and welds)
plus the described front end damage.
By the rule-book, this was a clear Statutory (non-registerable) write off.

Some time later I bought another Tassie-auction bike, again sight unseen,
this one labelled a Statutory (which attract VERY low $$-results, being
essentially wrecker-material), a 30 second inspection showed heavy front-end
damage to forks/wheel, also not-worthwhile-fixing damage to the front half
of engine...but not a single mark on the frame. In fact, measured the frame
with primitive tool and it doesn't even seem out at all. Even the
neck-bearing seats are NOT elongated or damaged in any way (often a sign of
heavy front-end damage).

By the book, that bike is NOT a statutory write-off, certainly repairable
even if at a cost not warranted, but not a structural write-off.
Both bikes were assessed by the same guy in Hobart and it's quite obvious
that he doesn't know shit about bikes.Which BTW was seconded by the local
Melb contract assessor to Swann/ QBE and others (after showing him the first
bike).

Taswegians...be careful of who's assessing your bike in case of a
claim....Trying to get initial assessments reversed/ altered is near
impossible or costs a horrendous amount of $$ in legals.

cheers
pete

 

Yes, just realised how silly that statement looks. OK, if kinder fees,
swimming lesson fees and a succession of other educational/financial
half-year bills hadn't hit all at the same time I would have considered
dropping the claim and fixing it myself. In fact, I could do it now, but
I'm so far gone with this that I'll persist, and if I'm not happy, buy a
new damn side and centre stand myself.

- sanbar

 

You'd pay $1500 out of your own pocket just because you weren't happy with the
way they were dealing with your centre stand repairs ??

Nev..
'03 ZX12R

 

X-No-archive: yes
Nev.. wrote :

****; stands are dear!
Clem
(Ring around a wreckers and you might get a second hand one for $600 or
so.......)