Excellent comment regarding independent legal protection- something I was not aware of. I cannot change this until my policy comes up for renewal.

Why did, or do ,my insurers automatically pass the claim to personal injury solicitors when nobody is claiming any injuries?

A recent story is the third party insurers have released a cheque....but it never left their accounts department. The next version was the cheque was waiting in the accounts department......but had been written to cover my insurers losses plus mine. Hence it was invalid because it cannot be split in two. Both are different stories to that given by the solicitors a couple of months ago.

Regarding money-after salvage payment I purchased car and insurer paid out £731. I received this but am waiting for excess etc at £651.

My overall opinion is my insurer is staffed with lots of young telesales claims handlers who have barely adequate ability. Every call gets taken by a different person and the notes then put on the file are inadequate or wrong. It may not be to my advantage but I am now with a different insurer. May not be any better -won't know until a claim arises!

Apologies to Lucy I do not want you to take this personally (I value your opinions)

I have a detailed breakdown of the fees incurred by the solicitors in "dealing" with my claim. Absolutely scandalous and I would suggest criminal.

I will throw this to the forum, to canvass opinion.

Solicitors say they phoned my mobile phone but got no answer. Now bear in mind the phone is a business tool with an answerphone- so this cannot occur. For this the insurance company was billed £17.50. Then again in the afternoon. Then the next day. Then the afternoon. Then the following day.Then the following day. Then.............and so it goes on.

I am suggesting it is all lies but there is no mechanism for checking. The solicitors "invent" a fictitious bill and the insurance company pays up without a murmur of objection. So it is a licence to print money. All this is being paid for by motorists.

As I said it is criminal............but we are talking about the legal profession, so do we have to assume thats alright and fair play?

Solicitors say they phoned my mobile phone but got no answer. Now bear in mind the phone is a business tool with an answerphone- so this cannot occur. For this the insurance company was billed £17.50. Then again in the afternoon. Then the next day. Then the afternoon. Then the following day.Then the following day. Then.............and so it goes on.

I entirely agree with you. The problem is time charging. It should be based on a fixed fee.

As things stand it is in everybody's interest to delay resolution. The accident manager gets more money by delaying the repair and hence extending the credit hire, the repairing garage also benefits as they pick up storage charges and the solicitor benefits by delaying settlement on the injury.

The new "fast track" system gets us part of the way there but only part way.

My own approach on any legal work is to quote a price to get to either a certain point in the case (such as issuing proceedings) or set a fee to achieve a pre-agreed outcome.

We are currently dealing with a relatively simple Sale of Goods Act case where the other side - a garage - instructed a solicitor to act for them. We would normally resolve these on the phone or by email in a day or so to everyone's satisfaction.

However the solicitor is this case concerned writes a two page letter to answer every point, mostly (I suspect) to drum up more costs from his client.

There are currently 18 letters on the file from him - mostly about costs. I am not party to the bill but my guess is that current legal costs to the other side will far exceed the cost of settlement.

At most this would be a small claims track case so no legal costs are recoverable so the entire liability for payment lies with his client.