This is simply an anecdotal tale of my personal experience, but it seems to illustrate so much that is wrong with being an ordinary individual in modern late capitalist society, that I thought it was worth relating.
I sit writing in my study. Water is dripping through the ceiling across the other side of the room.
After a heavy storm about six weeks ago, there was a downpour from the ceiling. The water was very dark and smelly. I don’t think I have any outflow pipes it could possibly come from, or I would have thought it was sewage.
So I phoned the insurance company. I bought the household insurance through Comparethemarket.com. I accepted a quote from a company called CETA which was for approximately £450 per year.
So I called the Claims number provided and was rather surprised to find the phone answered by a totally different company, the Davies Group. I spoke to a very pleasant lady with a young voice who had great difficulty hearing me and apologised for her faulty headset. She promised to phone me back the next morning.
The next morning she did phone me back, took my policy details and the nature of my claim, and said they would be in touch.
Nothing happened for another week. Water continued to drip in occasionally, adding to the internal damage.
After about another ten days I received a phone call from a drone operator. They wanted permission to access my property to make a drone survey of the house for the insurer. I confess I was rather surprised by this, especially as you can walk on to the flat roof above the study via a door from the bedroom. But I agreed.
The water continued to drip in. The floor now needs replacement.
Eventually the drone came and went. More time passed. Then I received another email pointing out that it was a condition of the policy that any flat roof must have been inspected, and repaired if necessary, in the two years prior to the start of the policy.
By total chance, I had in fact had the flat roof relaid in the two years prior to the start of the policy. The Davies Group – who in this email described themselves as “loss adjusters”- had asked for evidence that the work had been carried out by a qualified roofer.
A general building company doing maintenance had sub-contracted the roofer, so more time went by – and more water came in – while I obtained documents from the actual roofing company. This eventually happened and I sent them to the Davies Group.
The Davies Group are also asking for “evidence” that no more than 50% of the roof of the property is flat roof. But it is obviously well less than 50% and they have themselves sent up a drone, so they have the evidence already.
It has been raining heavily and the water is coming in quite hard. What kind of insurance company immediately puts all claims – including quite small ones like this – out to a loss adjuster?
They seem to be spending more resources denying the claim than it would cost to fix the leak. What was the drone for?
I called the Davies Group this morning, and got another nice young lady who could not access my claim as their systems were down, and asked me to call back in a few hours.
I therefore decided to call the CETA Group who comparethemarket.com had listed as the insurer and who had sent me the policy documents. That did not get me very far. CETA are not an insurer, but a broker. Their website calls them “the broker for the broker”.
So comparethemarket.com – which is licensed as an “insurance intermediary”, had taken my money and sold me a policy provided by CETA, an insurance broker.
But what company was actually insuring me? It would be neither the intermediary nor the broker.
I phoned CETA and spoke to a very helpful lady in a call centre, apparently overseas. She read from her screen and kept trying to refer me to the Davies Group.
I explained that I did not want to speak to the loss adjusters, I wished to speak to my actual insurer.
After a long, long phone conversation she spoke to her supervisor and I was given an 0203 number for the insurer, where I was told I could register a complaint about claims handling.
I called this number which was for a company named Arkel. Now after research I found that Arkel are in fact also not the insurer. They are an underwriting agency, which is an agent that has been given the authority by the insurer to conclude contracts.
Arkel do not have a website but do have a Linkedin page. They are a little company with just seven employees.
When I phoned Arkel, I was answered by a young man who just gave his own name, not the company, and plainly was not expecting to receive calls from a member of the public. He really did sound exactly as though I had just woken him up.
However when I explained the situation he could not have been more friendly and helpful. He explained that Arkel do not handle claims, but he did offer to contact the Davies Group on my behalf and find out what was happening, and I believed he would do it.
By this time I had read very carefully through my policy document, and while it had a big Arkel letterhead at the top, in the detail it gave the name of the actual insurer as the Chaucer Insurance Company.
The Chaucer Insurance Company is in fact 100% owned by China Re. China Re is 100% owned by the Chinese state.
I was just trying to get my roof fixed and the ceiling repaired. I did not expect to have all this trouble, or to discover my home is actually insured by the Chinese state, to which, while it seems a strange thing for the Chinese state to spend its time doing, I have no objection.
But consider this. I bought my insurance from comparethe market.com, an “insurance intermediary”, who took a cut. They got it from CETA, an “insurance broker”, who took a cut. They got it from Arkel, an “underwriting agent”, who took a cut. They were acting on behalf of Chaucer Insurance, whose frontmen get a cut from China Re, who ultimately get the profit, which goes to the Chinese State.
It is amazing there is anything left from my £450 to be pooled for the payment of claims. Which is perhaps why any claims immediately go to a loss adjuster – who of course gets yet another cut – and we have weeks of messing around, including drone shots of a roof you can walk on.
For me the worst part of this has been that every individual I have spoken to, in all these companies, has seemed a really nice person, genuinely wanting to help, but stuck there wearing a headset, reading limited responses from a screen, operating within their tiny delimited space in this nightmarish corporate jungle.
So many people now have this kind of utterly demeaning employment it has a real effect on human welfare.
Since I started writing, another very nice gentleman from CETA has called me in response to a lousy review I published on Trustpilot. He too said he would contact the Davies Group.
It is impossible that in the real world this corporate spaghetti is more efficient than the old insurance company that used to collect premiums and handle its own claims.
Involving this vast plethora of intermediaries can only work by screwing more out of the consumer – by not paying their claims.
Automatically bringing in loss adjusters on a small household claim is vexatious.
This is just a small personal story, but it seems to illustrate how impossible it has become for ordinary people to interact effectively with the hypercapitalism that orders so much of our lives.
Finally one last irony.
I did not expect to find the Chinese State insuring my home. The claim is being “handled” by loss adjusters The Davies Group, a huge portmanteau services company.
The Davies Group is 100% owned by BC Partners.
BC Partners is 100% owned by the Guardian Media Group.
I didn’t expect that either. The Guardian. Loss adjusters to the Chinese state. Welcome to 2023.
UPDATE Incredibly the loss adjuster has come up with a new reason to try to deny the claim. They say that the weather in Swanston 18 to 19 June did not meet the definition of “storm.”
The word “storm” does not in fact appear in the policy document, so I don’t know where this comes from.
They have now accepted my evidence that the roof was relaid by a qualified roofer in 2020, and that less than 50% of the roof area is flat.
They have referred the question of “storm” to the insurer and promised me an answer in three to four days, “Possibly sooner”. The rain is still dripping in. END UPDATE
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This is dystopia manifest.
Sorry to hear this tale, but I always go for a named insurance company and deal with them directly.
Exactly. All these market comparison sites are part of this ridiculous, convoluted system, and thankfully we still can avoid them.
I always used to think that one insurer’s (won’t name them but it’s one of the household names) refusal to put itself on the price comparison sites was just a marketing stunt.
Well, maybe it was, but this post and its comments has definitely put it in a different light.
Why not name them?
Sure the letter “u” in Chaucer is upside down.
Wish I could reply with a grin emoticon!
?
If you really want a challenge, get a PFI contract and try working out the ultimate beneficiary.
Although I feel your pain, Craig, this in its way is an extraordinary glimpse into the workings of the kind of ‘market’ that modern financialisation has created. Layer upon layer of service agents who have inserted themselves between a customer and a supplier, who provide no meaningful service at all, other than to distance the ultimate profiteer from the customer, and take a cut for themselves. No useful gain in productivity, or service, or efficiency or indeed the simple fixing of a leak. Quite the opposite in fact, where delays worsen the situation and increase the cost, and clearly are designed with the hope that a way can be found to turn down your claim. The entire apparatus appears designed to obfuscate, distance and remove any responsibility from the people whose sole interest in insurance is collecting your, and others, money. It might not be as literary as Kafka but it rivals him for the depiction of a bureaucratic nightmare of a system which has lost any contact with the people it supposedly ‘serves’.
The enormous irony in this is the role of ‘compare the market’, as if they too were on your side, providing the best quote, when we can only assume their recommendations are heavily weighted by the army of off-the-shelf companies whose interest is served by them. As a metaphor for the much vaunted ‘market’ that simple-minded tories think is some kind of mechanism which delivers ‘efficient outcomes’ it speaks volumes for how the financial industry works, providing nothing of value, while extracting money in a highly devious, largely hidden way.
I do hope you get it sorted and maybe in future find an insurance company with no intermediaries who actually deliver a decent service.
I know this is not going to be any help, but at least you were put through to a human. Whenever I try those internet ‘help’ buttons I normally end up communicating with an AI ‘person’ (complete with human name) whose answers to my questions simply result in a circular exchange of text messages with ever increasing frustration on my part.
We’re being told to consider it progress, Jon!
Report them to the FCA.
It appears to me that they’re in breach of TCF outcomes:
Outcome 1: Consumers can be confident they are dealing with firms where the fair treatment of customers is central to the corporate culture.
Outcome 2: Products and services marketed and sold in the retail market are designed to meet the needs of identified consumer groups and are targeted accordingly.
Outcome 3: Consumers are provided with clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during and after the point of sale.
Outcome 4: Where consumers receive advice, the advice is suitable and takes account of their circumstances.
Outcome 5: Consumers are provided with products that perform as firms have led them to expect, and the associated service is of an acceptable standard and as they have been led to expect.
Outcome 6: Consumers do not face unreasonable post-sale barriers imposed by firms to change product, switch provider, submit a claim or make a complaint.
From what I can tell from your experience, the claim handlers are in violation of nearly all of them.
Write them a letter alleging each breach of each TCF outcome – with the evidence for it and send it to the insurance company demanding action/compensation. At first they’ll fob you off with a derisory offer or some other deflection, but hang tight. If they will not come to terms, then threaten them with the Insurance Ombudsman under the violations of the TCF.
Once you do this they will know they have 8 weeks, then you can go forward to the Ombudsman. If that happens, it could cost them tens of thousands, so you’ll suddenly find them more cooperative and swift.
They then have 8 weeks.
Simples! 🙂
Kafka comes to mind. The capitalist system is ‘rationalised’ by a small percentage year after year, but obviously efficiency is lost on a larger scale. Bullshit jobs are created, money is transferred from A to B to C, but simple problems are not solved, on the contrary.
It may well be that all the interlocutors were very friendly and helpful. But the fact that this did not change during the telephone calls is probably due to Craig’s infinite patience and friendliness, which I admire but do not possess myself.
This system has long been hopelessly dysfunctional and resembles a termite-infested house. Occasionally everything comes down.
This totally concurs with my experience and it turns out no-one has a clue who is insuring what. “It turns our Mr Murray that the contract you signed in 1979 which was bought by Z capital who later sold it to Y investments, later amalgamated to 2XY Ltd and later being bought out (in part, not whole|) by T insurers however your particular part was owned by S (who are a part of the water company) who thus also own a bit of ground rent in your place means that you are practically self-insured! You must ask yor neighbour to fill out a 7C form and then because of who owns his ground rent, we will be able to reimburse you once the owner of 7C or his subsidiaries have cleared their debt with us. In the meantime, please send me your title deeds, the long 16 digit number on your credit card and the three numbers on the back, your full legal name and a copy of your passport and birth certificate. If you have a self-ID please provide that too.
The guardian. Via china. Who the fuck set that up.
Been reading quite a bit of Michael Hudson, really recommend it.
It seems The Guardian has been financialised. Its income relies on rents from insurance, real estate, finance. Prolly the newspaper bit is just incidental to its main income streams. Bit of branding. Bit of cred.
That explains a lot.
Yes doesn’t it.
Like Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca. I’m *shocked* to find the Guardian doesn’t rely on the generosity of its readers, to spout relentless establishment propaganda.
alexey, could you refer me to where the professor discusses the Guardian’s income sources please. There are some people I know who would benefit greatly from being better informed about that.
About 20 years ago I had a BT phone problem. I telephoned the fault number and was told to call a different number. This happened a few times until finally I was put through to the number I first called. I forget what I did after that, but this was a firm specialising in telephones and advertising how your communication problems would be solved by BT.
A little later as a retirement mini-job I was helping a Church set up a computer network and phone system for its admin office. After the new phone system was installed only half the calls were getting through. I think the provider was Opal. I phoned every day to complain and suggested there was a fault at the exchange. Every time I was fobbed off until Opal got exasperated and had an Openreach engineer come. He checked the kit in less than a minute and said – there’s a problem at the exchange, which was fixed within the hour.
Yep. Every time. In my experience, Openreach techs are always helpful, polite, and diligent, and when quizzed will consistently say they’re actually massively overstepping what they’re supposed to be doing in order to fix the fault and – hey, get this – help the customer. It’s so consistent that I think their managers must be quietly endorsing the approach, so aware are they of how dysfunctional the industry’s structure is.
May I respectfully suggest putting something on the floor to catch the water, or you will probably find the Adjuster will say you failed to take reasonable precautions to prevent the damage, and dismiss any subsequent claim for damage to the floor.
Generally speaking, if you have a leak or anything else that is causing on-going damage, it’s far better to get a couple of quotes without delay, get the damage fixed, and then make a claim. Nothing wrong with telling the insurer right away, of course, but don’t wait for them to sort it out. Your claim might well otherwise be dismissed concerning whatever damage happens, for failing to address it immediately.
Whether or not your claim is successful, you still need to get it fixed – time is definitely of the essence. That should have been done on day one. I’m amazed nobody bothered to say this. You might spend the next five years contesting the claim, but you cannot wait five years for it to be repaired!
Please do not wait another day.
I do have buckets. When it rains hard the water comes through the ceiling over a fifteen foot length. I don’t have a bucket that big.
Craig – get some plastic sheeting. Put something under the edges (bricks, planks of wood, books – anything) to direct it to make it pool, and empty it regularly. There’s no reason to just let it hit the floor.
Post the job here:
https://www.mybuilder.com/postajob/questions/trade
If you can actually see where the leak is on the flat roof, you can seal it with duct tape for the time being. You have to stop it creating more damage, and get someone onto it without delay.
The problem is there is decking on the roof which needs to be dismantled to get at it. I also suspect it is not as simple as just being a problem with the roof membrane. The water is very filthy and smelly, and when it rains very heavily there is about a twelve hour delay before it starts to come through – often after the rain has stopped. The ceiling has to be taken down and the leak traced.
Yes, certainly – catching it is only the most temporary measure. Put a lot of plastic containers on the floor, with plastic beneath. Mop anything it misses regularly, you mustn’t leave it soak through.
If there’s a lag between it raining and water seeping through, most likely wood is becoming exposed from above, through cracks in the flat roof. When fully saturated, it will start seeping through pretty steadily, and carry on doing so for a while after rain has stopped. It appears filthy because water has come through this wood, picking up contaminents from the pitch/tar on the surface.
Also, if water has been standing on the roof, it’s probably formed a stagnant pool, overflowing into a crack when it rains harder than the pool can evaporate. That’s why the water is so foul.
When it has rained regularly for many days, it comes through more quickly, I imagine? After the whole thing dries completely, it takes a while to fully saturate again.
It needs addressing without delay, these things only get worse, and the damage more.deep-set. I don’t know any roofers in Edinburgh, surely the local builder’s merchants can recommend someone to point you in the right direction, if mybuilders.com doesn’t help.
Is your house C18th or C19th? If so, it may have a lead lined gutter running under the roof. Because this is open at the top, it will overflow if it gets blocked. That would account for the sudden failure. Also if you have an old house, there is probably a fair depth of soot sitting on the laths that hold up the ceiling. This will initially soak up the water and later, as more water comes in, sooty water smelling of smoke will come through the ceiling.
If as the piece says he can easily access the flat roof over the study it’d be better to lay a sheet of builders’ polythene over the roof or at least the bit that’s leaking and stop the water getting in. Weight it down with bricks or better still batten it down to the bargeboards.
Flat roofs are always problematic and generally attract a higher insurance premium.
I poke a hole through the plasterboard of the ceiling at the point the leak seems strongest and put a bucket underneath,
often the water pools above and drenches a large area, but if you give it a route to escape it becomes predictable,
if the plasterboard is allowed to become sodden the whole lot can come down, it’s best to have a single hole and let it drain.
So typical of life now in the Western Empire; my sympathies to you. Last year, I had one employer through another company, and they bought human resources services from another company, who bought third-party-administered medical insurance in which another company handled claims, paid for by another company, using another company’s provider network. Except that second-to-last one, which needs to pay the bills, just stopped paying anything, and there’s nothing I can do except launch an expensive lawsuit against what turns out to be a fly-by-night company, in another state.
It’s like the Fall of the Roman Empire.
Craig, sonetimes you are very naive. If you have never heard of them then there is a reason.
This sounds like the scene in Asterix & Obelix where they visit “the place that drives you mad”. It isn’t some haunted ruin or lovecraftian hellscape.
It’s a nondescript office building, full of nonsensical and repetitive bureaucratic obstacles on accomplishing any simple task.
Madre Mía de todos los Santos! I would not be as calm as you are!
They say the truth can be stranger than fiction, and this case proves the point.
There’s a film called The Laundromat that touches on the practice of multiple companies involvement in insurance but instead of the Chinese state and the Guardian at the end of the line it’s a couple of crooked lawyers and an off shore fraud operation.
My suggestion is not to wait any longer for these hopeless companies to do something, you’re lucky it’s a flat roof with access. Get out there with a tin of Cromapol, scrim tape and some flashband and bodge it for now, (or send a friend to)
Surely some local reader here can help Craig out with this? This is most likely a tear in the felt or a flashing issue, either of which may well be accessible without scaffolding or tall ladders. I’d offer myself if I wasn’t 400 miles away.
If dealing with it on the outside really isn’t an option then invest in a 3m by 4m sheet of DPM, cut it to size and staple it to the ceiling to channel the water into a bucket. It wont look good but it will save the floor.
Nothing new here really. Dickens created a character called Montague Tigg who dealt in insurance as a means to fleece the public. Once claims started coming in, he renamed himself Tigg Montatague in order to see off his claimants which seemed to succeed for a while.
I worked as an ‘agent/collector’ for an old fashioned insurance company some decades back. These companies weren’t the cheapest but did offer excellent service. I recall paying out a claim in CASH within a week of the claim. Adjusters were for big or complex claims only. But, of course, people think ‘insurance is just insurance’ and went for cheaper and the internet accelerated this. Now we know that insurance ISN’T just insurance any more than a car is just a car. Would you pay the same price for a Skoda as a Rolls Royce. Minimizing claims vexatiously is stock in trade now. Companies with good claims processing are exponentially more expensive due to lack of trade now. Be careful what you wish for, cheap insurance is usually just bad service..
Yes, this is what has been discovered across all of what was once western and eastern Europe. Once you fragment the relationship between the company (or in USSR government agency) and the consumer (or citizen) then everything falls to pieces. The mobile phone culture has built an extra layer between the consumer and the provider where you are dependent on non facial contact. And then your credit or battery runs out after an hour listening to classical music. Cui bono?
If you are lucky you might get a smart girl from Asia who knows what she is doing, but often you will simply be ‘dephoned’ by failing some security question.
Farage will perhaps sense the desire for a local post office and local pub along with a Gas/Electricity/Insurance office where you can actually turn up and complain. Nobody else seems interested.
Good morning Ambassador. Murray,
Might I respectfully suggest a little lateral thought here? Obtain 3 reputable quotes to repair the damage to your home.
Take control yourself by having the leak repaired as soon as possible (using the best quote company). Primarily to prevent further demonstrable damage the vexatious web of prevaricating commission-grabbers are causing?
Then issue a Letter-Before-Action to the Guardian newspaper and c.c. the editor of The Guardian AND cc ALL other newspaper editors.
Give the Guardian 7 days to cough-up. Failure so to do, will result in the Small Claims court action commencing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
INCLUDE the cost of YOUR time as you can be sure all of the insurance-payment-dodging crooks are getting paid. Your time should be paid too (and I have persuaded several Sheriffs and Judges to agree that principle). I find a modest hourly rate of “living wage” rather than what my job pays as the living wage is less, but it shows to the judge that the legal action is being based on fair numbers. I have won in court and on the steps of court many times when seeking my time/cost be paid.
As for this nightmare? Craig, your description is beautifully written and reminds me of an episode of the Victor Meldrew TV series (I write about your article in the nicest possible way).
The insurers/agents/their lawyers are likely to say you have failed to follow protocol.
But my objective would be to thoroughly embarrass the Guardian newspaper (not because of politics but due to being part of a rip-off scandal).
The Guardian’s lawyers and PR people will want to bury this. Their competitor newspaper are likely to have a salacious dig. If not, I am sure Private Eye will write about President Xi and his Guardianista Insurance Denial Factory.
Either way, methinks the Arkel/Davies/Re-Che & Compare-The-Con-Kat PR machine will swing into action and take ownership of the problem. Their mission being to extinguish the bad publicity by paying a relatively small amount to you to settle. But ample to cover a proper repair! Plus they will try to push an NDA. I often agree to sign an NDA if the miscreant organisation agrees £1,000 to a registered charity. Then watch their lawyers craniums] implode as they lose this game of litigation chess.
I have faith in this approach as we deploy it quite a lot. It is the hot knife through butter protocol.
Good luck sir.
Sincerely, Al.
Re: ‘Plus they will try to push an NDA.’
Our host has just disclosed his (amusing) tale of corporate woe on one of the most read politics blogs in Britain, Al. Most lawyers aren’t as smart as they like to think, but I don’t think they’re that thick.
Hope things can get sorted for him soonest. I’ve got a big tin of ‘IKOpro’ Flat Roof Renovator* and a big paintbrush in the garage, which I used to fix its not-insubstantially leaking roof last year. No problems so far this year, even though we’ve just had over triple the average July rainfall in my current neck of the woods, the nearest city already being the second wettest in England. I’d offer them to him if I was anywhere near Edinburgh.
^ Other Flat Roof Renovators are available – but they’re probably not as good. I do not own any shares, or have any beneficial interest, in IKO plc.
Well, I’d simply fix the roof ASAP when I saw the leak and deal with the insurance later. The deductible for such repairs is fairly high anyway so the last time we had leaky roof we did not even bother.
You write a good story, Craig. You’ve stepped on something of a merry-go-round, methinks. Probably the biggest mistake is working through some sort of internet resource to provide the cheapest insurance in the first place. A larger and better known and better resourced company (I don’t know the UK market now) might cost more, but it might have saved you the run around you’ve experienced.
But as I say, you write a good story and you open a window on the absurdities and flakiness of hyper- capitalism and what happens when under Thatcherite (TINSTAS) neoliberalism, government and legislation withdraw from their fiscal and economic responsibilities to the citizens they’re paid to look after. A country for cowboys. .
Have you considered temporarily putting a thick waterproof sheet on the roof and weighing it down with building bricks or breeze blocks?
I have done that. It seems to have limited effect. One probable reason is that the flat roof has a parapet all round so the water has ultimately to go onto the roof to exit the drain (which is not blocked – that is not the problem. Another possible explanation is that the water is coming in somehow not through the roof membrane – inside the wall from the main roof above, for example.
It needs to be excavated out to find the cause by someone who knows what they are doing.
A conservation architect told me that, in his experience, 90% of roof leaks on old buildings are caused by faulty leadwork. It was very hot in June and the lead could have expanded, then cracked when the temperatures returned to something closer to normal. All good leadworkers are registered with the Lead Contractors’ Association, who maintain a list on their website.
A friend of mine got a letter from the Inland Revenue about a tax refund and after a month chased it up. It seems that the claim was made on her behalf by a company which took the money and owes it to her (minus a cut). The owner of the company doesn’t have an address, phone number or e-mail. She tracked the bugger down and sent a dossier to the Revenue who haven’t done anything. I fear for them because she’s annoyed now.
An astounding story, and bless you for your patience.
All I can say is, wait until you find out how many people in Europe are insured by NORTH KOREAN companies. No, I wish I were joking.
Flat roofs are always a problem unfortunately as water pools on top of them. I used to work in insurance claims in the late 1980s and instructing a loss adjuster immediately for certain types of claim was pretty normal eg. water damage, fire/smoke damage, flat roofs, subsidence. It’s because they are expensive to put right and people often use the opportunity of an insurance claim to add on extra things they want that are unrelated.
Now try to make a complaint about this episode to the Financial Ombudsman and find yourself stuck in a mire of their rules which you could not have possibly known about at the outset, and which they will rely on to deny any compensation or other actions to remedy the appalling rip-off that is much of home insurance.
Car insurance has gone the same way with everything farmed out to claim handlers who extract more money by pressuring you to get a hire car, we have a 2nd car an didn’t need one. Also they have a restricted list of approved repairers. Trivial accident damage results in write offs and profit made selling salvage.
The same thing I’ve discovered has happened to me. Three – yes 3! – years back someone drove into the back of me whilst stationary on an A road. Speaking to the ‘insurance’ company I was offered a similar replacement car. No offer or ask about getting by on a smaller or no car. Recently I received a communication from the car hire company saying the at-fault-parties insurance co was questioning my choice of car as they would not cover the cost. Just to complicate things Covid-19 was in full swing so delays in getting spares from Japan (Toyota).
Now previously when I had an accident, way back in the 80s, this process was all straightforward and I assumed it would be the same this time. I do wonder if the call I made on that day was to my actual insurance company or claim handlers?
We were offered a top up policy on our house insurance giving fast response to this sort of claim and had good service when an aerial bracket fell off the chimney and broke some tiles.
If the Guardian are involved no wonder the whole thing has gone to shit. They probably employ the ‘Manafort visited Assange’ technique in assessing your claim – i.e. make up bullshit to screw you over.
A Kafkaesque situation sadly but beautifully put!
It also amply demonstrates the point that using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of a county’s economic vigour, so beloved of capitalist countries, is so flawed. All those tranches of commissions all contribute to raising GDP but at the end of the day, there is no real product.
Hope you get your roof fixed.