Driven to Distraction

Just got my car back from the body shop.

In March, a 79-year old man parked his Volvo estate (station wagon) behind my parked car to post a letter. When he drove away, he got confused about the difference between his accelerator (gas) and brake pedals.

Result? He pushed my car fifteen yards into two other cars that were parked in front of mine, writing off the other two and (I thought) mine. No-one was hurt, but it wasn't a good day.

I called the insurance people and they took the car off to the bodyshop. This was March 10th. Yesterday, July 27th, I finally get my car back, having had to take it back two times to have the bodyshop remedy their sloppy work.

What gets my goat, however, is not the bodyshop but the insurance company. They made a big deal about the claim, ensuring that everything up to the point of starting the work on the car was taken care of effectively and well. For that, kudos.

But after that, they didn't want to know. The repair cost more than £5000, yet when I got my car back, no-one called to see if I was happy with the work done. It seems that the quality of repair was of no interest to them.

Moreover, when I found seven things that needed correcting after the repair, they provided little or help to get things sorted. When the dealer refused to take the car a third time to fix the things left over from the second time in the 'shop, I called the insurers to sort it out. They agreed, then without letting me know, raised an internal escalation. Result: when the dealer did eventually take the car for further investigation the work needed was delayed for more than 10 days, because my claim "...had been escalated to customer relations..." who responded much more slowly than the claims department.

At least I had the recursive pleasure of raising an escalation with the insurance company about their escalation process...

What they needed was a reasonable situation appraisal process - but I continue to be amazed - so many people and so many organisations will do anything rather than think. It's a very expensive pastime....

Anyway - my car is back and eating up the motorway miles. It's sunny, and for a little while, all's right with the World.

- Drib