Insurance Claim - What to expect
Discussion
Binned my bike this morning. Relatively low speed - broken hand guards, dented tank, lost tank puck (its a Buell), broken gear shift, indicators and the engine wont turn over. Most expensive bit is a wacked my head pretty good so obviously gonna need a replacement lid too. All in all the lid on its own is more than my excess to replace so a claim was put
I have fully comp and to be honest so far not impressed. They took my details, said I would hear back in 48 hours! 48 hours - I have to get to work etc somehow, I have no other way of getting into the city as the public transport doesn't go directly there, would involve 2 or 3 buses and a train each way minimum of around 3 hours each way.
Now I have claimed on a car insurance before, within 8 hours I was at the garage picking up a loan car while mine was repaired, so why is it any different for a bike?
Shouldn't someone be coming picking up my ride and bringing a replacement ?
How about the gear? Obviously I could not even ride a replacement without a helmet.
I have fully comp and to be honest so far not impressed. They took my details, said I would hear back in 48 hours! 48 hours - I have to get to work etc somehow, I have no other way of getting into the city as the public transport doesn't go directly there, would involve 2 or 3 buses and a train each way minimum of around 3 hours each way.
Now I have claimed on a car insurance before, within 8 hours I was at the garage picking up a loan car while mine was repaired, so why is it any different for a bike?
Shouldn't someone be coming picking up my ride and bringing a replacement ?
How about the gear? Obviously I could not even ride a replacement without a helmet.
Chris_R said:
Binned my bike this morning. Relatively low speed - broken hand guards, dented tank, lost tank puck (its a Buell), broken gear shift, indicators and the engine wont turn over. Most expensive bit is a wacked my head pretty good so obviously gonna need a replacement lid too. All in all the lid on its own is more than my excess to replace so a claim was put
I have fully comp and to be honest so far not impressed. They took my details, said I would hear back in 48 hours! 48 hours - I have to get to work etc somehow, I have no other way of getting into the city as the public transport doesn't go directly there, would involve 2 or 3 buses and a train each way minimum of around 3 hours each way.
Now I have claimed on a car insurance before, within 8 hours I was at the garage picking up a loan car while mine was repaired, so why is it any different for a bike?
Shouldn't someone be coming picking up my ride and bringing a replacement ?
How about the gear? Obviously I could not even ride a replacement without a helmet.
Well you should of heard something by now .I have fully comp and to be honest so far not impressed. They took my details, said I would hear back in 48 hours! 48 hours - I have to get to work etc somehow, I have no other way of getting into the city as the public transport doesn't go directly there, would involve 2 or 3 buses and a train each way minimum of around 3 hours each way.
Now I have claimed on a car insurance before, within 8 hours I was at the garage picking up a loan car while mine was repaired, so why is it any different for a bike?
Shouldn't someone be coming picking up my ride and bringing a replacement ?
How about the gear? Obviously I could not even ride a replacement without a helmet.
Regards the helmet depends on your policy did you cover your helmet and leathers ?
Who you insured with ?
It gets better.
Its Bennets by the way...
The process consists of me ringing up the Bennets phone number. If you want to speak about an existing claim they automatically put you through to some solicitor (a separate company who manage claims) type affair. This basically consists of some shouty self-righteous northern cow who wont let you get a word in edge-ways to ask a question and just likes to say "you should have read the small print" or "we don't cover that you need to speak to someone else". She seemed to get really annoyed when I pointed out that I was paying her a great deal of money for her to shout down the phone and preach at me of the merits of getting a bus to work.
This is when it gets further complicated. If I want to speak to someone about the bike I need to speak to Equity Red Star on another number. If I want to speak to someone about getting a new lid (as I have helmet and leathers cover), that's another number. If you want to question if what either of those two are telling you, you then need to hang up, re-dial Bennets and go through to customer services, who then ring one of the above two to question it! For some bizarre reason I can't just ring the company I made the purchase of the insurance with and get them to do the chasing around of numpties
Despite that comprehensive cover on every other policy I have had includes the ability to have a loan bike/car while yours is being fixed, Bennets doesn't. They don't have it, there is no option on the policy to have it (hence why the witch from the north kept chiming on about reading the small print).
What they seem to be unable to answer is:
1. Why can I claim on my insurance for parts that need replacing, but not on a bike to hire/loan. This seems daft to me.
2. When can I have a new helmet so that I can ride a bike. What is the process, who can I speak to about it? I don't mind shelling out as long as I am going to get it back.
3. As I have another bike in the back garden awaiting sale, can I get my cover on that one in the time being so that I can earn a crust and pay my yearly insurance premium (which so far seems to amount to nothing other than adding convolution to the process). BUT I need number 2 sorted first as I have no lid.
I have to wait until tomorrow to get answers to the above. Not sure why, probably because the woman on the end of the phone wanted to go home being Friday afternoon.
They are not sending their engineer to look at the bike until middle of next week. Depending what he says they will move it to my local repairers, though I expect that is a further nightmare waiting to happen when they discover that they don't have the necessary tools to remove the rear wheel, refit the drive belt or the simple fact that every bolt is not metric. I am trying to insist that it done by the approved Harley dealers as the warranty could be jeprodized .
Additionally they have not yet managed to return a call without me ringing them to find out what is going on. Sheesh, its almost as if they expect the few hundred quid a year for doing nothing other than printing reams of small print leaflets for you.
Its at the point that you need them most that you don't want to find out that they are as useful a knitted condom, looks like I am in for further fun and games
Its Bennets by the way...
The process consists of me ringing up the Bennets phone number. If you want to speak about an existing claim they automatically put you through to some solicitor (a separate company who manage claims) type affair. This basically consists of some shouty self-righteous northern cow who wont let you get a word in edge-ways to ask a question and just likes to say "you should have read the small print" or "we don't cover that you need to speak to someone else". She seemed to get really annoyed when I pointed out that I was paying her a great deal of money for her to shout down the phone and preach at me of the merits of getting a bus to work.
This is when it gets further complicated. If I want to speak to someone about the bike I need to speak to Equity Red Star on another number. If I want to speak to someone about getting a new lid (as I have helmet and leathers cover), that's another number. If you want to question if what either of those two are telling you, you then need to hang up, re-dial Bennets and go through to customer services, who then ring one of the above two to question it! For some bizarre reason I can't just ring the company I made the purchase of the insurance with and get them to do the chasing around of numpties
Despite that comprehensive cover on every other policy I have had includes the ability to have a loan bike/car while yours is being fixed, Bennets doesn't. They don't have it, there is no option on the policy to have it (hence why the witch from the north kept chiming on about reading the small print).
What they seem to be unable to answer is:
1. Why can I claim on my insurance for parts that need replacing, but not on a bike to hire/loan. This seems daft to me.
2. When can I have a new helmet so that I can ride a bike. What is the process, who can I speak to about it? I don't mind shelling out as long as I am going to get it back.
3. As I have another bike in the back garden awaiting sale, can I get my cover on that one in the time being so that I can earn a crust and pay my yearly insurance premium (which so far seems to amount to nothing other than adding convolution to the process). BUT I need number 2 sorted first as I have no lid.
I have to wait until tomorrow to get answers to the above. Not sure why, probably because the woman on the end of the phone wanted to go home being Friday afternoon.
They are not sending their engineer to look at the bike until middle of next week. Depending what he says they will move it to my local repairers, though I expect that is a further nightmare waiting to happen when they discover that they don't have the necessary tools to remove the rear wheel, refit the drive belt or the simple fact that every bolt is not metric. I am trying to insist that it done by the approved Harley dealers as the warranty could be jeprodized .
Additionally they have not yet managed to return a call without me ringing them to find out what is going on. Sheesh, its almost as if they expect the few hundred quid a year for doing nothing other than printing reams of small print leaflets for you.
Its at the point that you need them most that you don't want to find out that they are as useful a knitted condom, looks like I am in for further fun and games
I am really sorry, it's Bennetts, you'll have a lot of shit to deal with. Try to talk direct to the insurance company, forget the legal people at Bennetts, they're a complete waste of time and money - their sole purpose is to make you go away, claim less and not chase Bennetts, that's all they do.
Unsurprisingly it turns out the woman I spoke to yesterday who was going to get someone to ring me about it all today was in fact lying through her teeth.
The underwriters are not even open to discuss, they only open Monday to Friday as I suspected and asked them specifically yesterday if this was the case.
No work for me then on Monday. Swines
The underwriters are not even open to discuss, they only open Monday to Friday as I suspected and asked them specifically yesterday if this was the case.
No work for me then on Monday. Swines
Chris_R said:
What they seem to be unable to answer is:
1. Why can I claim on my insurance for parts that need replacing, but not on a bike to hire/loan. This seems daft to me.
Loan vehicles are, IME, provided with many comprehensive car policies, but not that many bike policies. It was started back in the early nineties when car insurers (I think Endsleigh was the first) realised that they could offer the service for no cost by getting the authorised repairers to provide the courtesy vehicles in return for getting the repair business. The bodyshops agreed as it pretty much guaranteed them a steady flow of work and income and the insurer benefitted by being able to offer a hassle-free service to the customer where the damage wasn't too great. It all got a bit more complicated where the vehicle was close to being a write-off, but that's the gist.1. Why can I claim on my insurance for parts that need replacing, but not on a bike to hire/loan. This seems daft to me.
Unfortuately bikes are a bit different. There aren't that many (any?) bike bodyshops set up to do this kind of work so insurance companies haven't been either willing or able to offer the same deal on bikes. I can't think of any bike insurer who offers a courtesy bike as standard, although most do offer an uninsured loss recovery policy which allows you to hire and claim back from someone who causes an accident which damages your bike. Not the situation here I'm guessing from your description.
Bummer about your situation OP. Can't you at least buy another lid and sort out the cover on the 'spare' bike so you can get around in the meantime? I'd imagine they'd be able to do that at least by adding the bike as a temporary additional vehicle on your policy.
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