After the accident with the car last weekend its been a car involved week.
Saturday afternoon I thought I’d do the right thing and ring the insurance company to get things going. I am insured with a fairly new company, and only had the insurance policy for less than a month so wasn’t sure how smoothly this was going to go. I found the policy information that they sent me. First step, ring the 13-telephone number thats marked as being available 7 days a week. I get the automated prompts and eventually press the button for claims. Only to get a recording that the office is closed and only open Monday - Friday. Hmmmm. Dial again, and this time notice that after the message you can press a button for ‘emergency’ claims. I didn’t think this was really an emergency but wasn’t exactly sure what they call an emergency so pushed the button. The phone was answered by another automated system at ANOTHER company that handled claims, and the recording indicated that their office was closed too. The recording said that I could press a button to be forwarded to the after hours contact of their out of hours assessor. I didn’t think it was necessary to do that. But the whole phone run around was not a good start. Decided to leave it until Monday.
On Monday at 9am I phoned and after a few minutes on hold someone picked up the call. When I explained that I needed to lodge a new claim they told me that that department was busy and could they take my details and they would call me back. No problem. At 11.30am and no call back I rang again. Same thing, department is busy can I leave my details and they’d call me back. Ok. At 3.00pm and no call I ring again, this time a bit more annoyed. I was advised the same thing. I said I’d left a message at 9am and nobody had rung me back yet, when could I expect a call. The lady explained that there was only ONE PERSON who handled claims, and they were busy but would definitely call me back today. One person? This was not a good sign either.
Shortly after that I did get a phone call. The lady was polite and took all the particulars of the accident. She gave me the names of several repair business’ in the area that I could use (as I didn’t have my own repairer). I rang one of the repairers and booked it in for an inspection on Tuesday, the next day. Tuesday morning I dropped it off (after spending 10mins circling the block looking for a car park) and caught the train to work. I got a phone call that afternoon that I could collect my car. Caught the train back there and drove the car home, then trained it back to work again.
On Thursday I got a call from the insurer that the repairs had all been approved and I just needed to book it in. I did that, so next Monday morning I’ll drop it off to be fixed, hopefully to be collected on Friday.
So after an initial poor start to the insurance claim it all seems to be working out well. So far, so good.