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I recently had all 4 tyres slashed, resulting in £575 bill for new rubber. After allowing for my £300 excess, I'd anticipated getting the balance of £275 back from my insurer, but they have told me the claim was reduced by 50% taking into consideration the age of the old tyres. As it now comes to less than the excess, I'm finishing up paying all of the £575 out of my pocket. Is this normal practice where tyres are concerned? Does wear & tear on other components get taken into account when they need replacing via an insurance claim, e.g. engine parts, seats, exhausts.
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I'd imagine it is due to the fact that tyres are a wear and tear item - wouldn't it be convenient if your tyres with 1.7mm of tread left all got slashed and you got a nice new set from the insurer.
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But my house and contents policy is "new for old", so why not my car policy? Just for the record, there was 6mm tread on the front tyres and 4mm on the back. The fronts were 10 months old and had covered 6.5k miles. The rears were about two and a half years old and had done about 27k.
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It is a tad unfair. Whilst you can see the insurers take on it I doubt you were planning on spending any money on tyres any time soon.
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Pity you don't know who the culprits were...
It's at times like these I love those who are in business as uninsured loss recoverers. They know more about the insurance game than Joe Public and they don't let the insurers get away with not meeting the true extent of their libilities.
Rgds.
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What if the poor bloke doesn't have 50% of the value of his tyres kicking around to pay out?
He probably wasn't going to buy new tyres at all this year Mark, probably not next year either but now he is forced to pay out for something that was insured.
If insurers don't want to provide brand new tyres - and I've no issue with this in principle, becuase you are right, he's used 50% of the tyre, then should arrange for replacement part worn tyres or something. It's unacceptable he should have to pay anything except his excess.
If some bloke pours paint stripper on your car and it NEEDS a full respray your insurer doesnt say 'It's going to cost 2 grand to fix but as you had a few scratches and a scrape over there, we'll only pay 1 grand', do they?
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>>If some bloke pours paint stripper on your car and it NEEDS a full respray your insurer doesnt say 'It's going to cost 2 grand to fix but as you had a few scratches and a scrape over there, we'll only pay 1 grand', do they?
I'm afraid that sometimes they do. Although obviously not for just a few scratches, but it does happen. The most common time it occurs with the car itself would be where there is previous accident damage or rust - and it happens more than you think.
>>but now he is forced to pay out for something that was insured
I understand what you are saying, but the exact problem is that 50% of his tyres (already used bit) and his excess were NOT insured.
I agree that this may now cause him to pay out something that he wouldn't actually have paid for a year or similar - bit I'm not sure of the alternative.
Reducing his excess to £0 would help next time, but that would cost a lot of money. He could go and buy part worn tyres, but an insurance company certainly couldn't supply them - what else is there ?
The only thing I can say to help is the thing I always say - don't blink first. I know its fashionable and trendy to believe that insurers will take any opportunity to avoid a claim that they can, but it actually isn't true. The issue is almost always people have not read their policy, have not thought about the implications of the Ts&Cs or have not considred that a particular event could happen.
The figure salways used to be something along the lines of "insurers felt they could avoid 20% of claims, they actually avoid less than 5%" - I've kind of made the figures up, but it was something like that.
By the way, "avoid" is legal and accceptable, "evade" is neither.
Hence there is a chunk of claims that are made that strictly could have been avoided. This can be for attractive reasons such as a long term and valued customer or it can be for less attractive reasons that the insurer doesn't want the negative publicity. (not that they want a reputation for pyaing out leniently, either).
What all that means is that going back and pushing can help. In this case one could argue that they were not 50% worn, they were only 25% worn, or one could argue that they've used a value of £50 per tyre and it should be £100 per tyre or flat out giving them a bad time because you weren't told of the issues with betterment.
Don't get bitter, don't get rude, don't threaten, don't stand on your rights (you haven't got any in this case) but do contact them and push. You never know, you just might get somewhere.
Never blink first.*
M.
* - the other guy sometimes has the same approach, you do need to know when to give up.
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>>If some bloke pours paint stripper on your car and it NEEDS a full respray your insurer doesnt say 'It's going to cost 2 grand to fix but as you had a few scratches and a scrape over there, we'll only pay 1 grand', do they?
Yup: My mother's 440 had a supermarket trolley 'ding' in the front door. Later, after an aborted theft of the vehicle during which the same door skin was punctured with a screw driver, Dad had the car repaired "on the insurance".
The insurer subtracted the cost of repairing the door ding from the cost of repairing the screwdriver damage. Their logic was the same "betterment" that I referred to in my posting above.
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I should have said above that repair was to fit a new door panel, thus repairing both sets of damage in one sweep.
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Just make sure that they have it recorded that you haven't made a claim; not that you've made a claim for which they have paid out £0.
I presume you were confident that making a claim wasn't going to increase your premium next year and subsequent years by more than £275? (Through loss of ncd (though you may have protected that), AND premium loading owing to your 'bad' record.)
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>>Just make sure that they have it recorded that you haven't made a claim; not that you've made a claim for which they have paid out £0.
An outstandingly good point. And get it in writing.
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I would have thought the insurance co. would work it out like this: £575 minus the excess = £275. Then take 50% off for wear & tear, leaving £137.50 (hope the maths is right).
On the other hand, is it worth claiming even for this amount, bearing in mind that although I've got max. NCD they'd probably increase the base premium next time round.
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>>I would have thought the insurance co. would work it out like this: £575 minus the excess = £275. Then take 50% off for wear & tear, leaving £137.50
Why ?
What's the value of the tyres ? £575.00
What is the value of the actual loss ? 50% worn = £287.50
How much of that is insured ? deduct excess of £275 = £12.50
Ditto on the maths.
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But its difficult to buy 50% of a tyre so its not as if he really has any practical option but to pay out of his own pocket? Technically its betterment but those tyres would have lasted a good year yet.
Insurance bodyshops don't use second hand panels and don't get you to pay most of the work if the panel some idiot shunted for you had a scratch on it.
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Insurance bodyshops don't use second hand panels and don't get you to pay most of the work if the panel some idiot shunted for you had a scratch on it.
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you would be surprised. although others have already explained what insurance covers and does not cover, here is another anlge.
in simple terms:
insurance run by commercial businesses is not for the benefit of the insured. it is for the benefit of the business.
just go through previous ombudsman reports to see how many people had their misapprehension of insurance sorted out at that forum.
always remember who you are claiming agains/from, and on what contractual or negligence basis.
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::blushes:: Thank you Mark!
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they may not mark it as a claim, but can mark it down as having had an incident.
this can still carry a loading and vandalism i believe has a bigger loading than attempted theft. strange.
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