There has been a lot of airtime spent on the subject of large rises being imposed by the insurance industry on UK car owners. All the usual excuses have been aired from increases in young driver claims, to large third party settlements and fraudulent claims to name but a few. Anyway they all result in further increases and are allegedly out of the control of the insurers. The facts are much simpler. Until the insurance companies sort out the way they deal with claims we will forever suffer from these annual increases. To illustrate how our money is being wasted let me recount a recent incident. My MG ZT-T was scraped in a car park last year removing some paint off the rear bumper. I then gently backed into a bollard causing some further damage to the paintwork. Fed up with the scruffy appearance I went to two local body shops. One large and very well equipped, another a small two man outfit in the local trading estate. Both looked at the damage. The larger quoted £300 and would need the car for a day only. The other quoted £260 but wanted it for two days. Both said they would have to remove the bumper to do the work. Four weeks ago my daughter borrowed than car and whilst stationary in a supermarket car park was backed into by another car causing a further scrape to the bumper paintwork. The driver apologised, admitted liability, left her details and my daughter came home. Having just had the quote I wrote to the driver and told her how much the repair would cost but she chose to refer the matter to her insurers admitting full liability. Now the insurance companies screamed into action. I phoned mine to report the matter, did a report over the phone and within an hour was in touch with their authorised repair shop forty miles away and another organisation who would ensure that I had a replacement vehicle while my car was being repaired. The next day the other party's insurance brokers were on to me accepting liability and an offering immediate repair, full replacement hire car and anything else I needed. This was all too good, I was swamped with concern. A week later an operative from the repairer came the forty miles to look at my car. He sucked his teeth, said a new bumper was a necessity but they were 'hard to get hold of'. When they found one he would let me know and they would need the car for a week. Now three weeks later they still have not found the bumper, I am phoned daily by the car rental people wanting to deliver me a car and I wonder what is going on? The whole matter could have been sorted for £300 three weeks ago. Instead a vastly more expensive repair is going to be undertaken at some point in the future involving the insurers of the other party having to pay for a weeks hire of an 'equivalent' vehicle with both delivery and collection costs to be paid. I reckon that the cost of this repair is now at least five times higher than it need be. I would think that the vast majority of motor vehicle insurance claims fit into this type of category with a small minority being the major injury creating crashes. Hence every year millions of pounds are being wasted and we are picking up the tab.