Insurance offer for crap service

[dacouch]

Ginge R said:

By accepting this offer you are not automatically binding yourself to not reporting the matter to the Financial Ombudsman. In fact, if the offer was originated by them and if you haven't complained, you don't have much to lose. I would make sure though, that you make it clear you reserve your right to make a complaint at a later stage if circumstances suggest you stand to fairly benefit from making that subsequent complaint.

In effect, and if I'm reading it correctly, the clock hasn't even started ticking, the offer is one of good faith on the companies part and not in response to a complaint. My only concern would be 'why'.. why are they making an offer when they don't have to? On the surface of it, they seem to have acted promptly and fairly. Just make sure to keep your options open.

The Ombudsman are surprisingly tight when it comes to compensation in these types of situation, I assume the £150 includes the £70 for the £10 per day cost of the courtesy car excess insurance. So in effect the compensation for non financial loss is £80.

That's within what I would expect the Ombudsman to rule as appropriate.

Playing devils advocate here which is how the Ombudsman will view it and based on the information we have which is fairly limited.

They gave an expected arrival time of 90mins but arrived after 180 minutes, not great service but sometimes their are operational reasons. This would be aggravated if they had not kept the daughter updated of progress / delays.

They paid £10 a day to reduce the excess from £1000, as the daughter had recently passed her test, I would expect the excess on her own car to be upwards of £350 even more if she was under 25. So the jump in excess may not be as large as people assume. If they had not needed to provide a hire car due to losing the car they would have provided a courtesy car which would have had a similar excess eg £750 or £1000 if it was covered by the garage's insurance. If this had been the case she would have been liable herself for the extra £10 a day to reduce the excess if she had decided to take this out. Some Insurer's cover the courtesy car under their policyholders own insurance in which case the excess is the same as would have been on the policy. The OP doesn't mention how much his daughter's excess is but as I said I would expect it to be upwards of £350.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications...

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications...

[Ginge R]

I don't disagree with you. I thought it refreshing that the fair (on the surface of it) offer was made without (seemingly) being pressed to do so. Having just had a run in with an insurer, I know how hard it is to wring money from 'em.