MOST readers will have experienced the plague of unwanted phonecalls and texts urging them to "reclaim thousands in missold PPI".
But how many know that car and motorcycle insurance is second only to PPI as the most complained about type of insurance policy in the UK? Yet how often are drivers urged to read the smallprint or challenge rejected claims?
According to a special report by consumer watchdog the Financial Ombudsman Service (FSO), nearly half of the complaints brought to them by motorists in the last few years were upheld.
It stated: "Aside from PPI, we see more complaints about car and motorcycle insurance than any other type of insurance. And cases involving theft or attempted theft make up a large part of these.According to police figures, car thefts in the UK have fallen considerably, from 378,000 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2013. But, over the past few years, the number of contested claims reaching us has been relatively steady. During that time, we've decided in around four in every 10 cases that a claim has been wrongly rejected."
The report, which also scrutinised loopholes misused by insurers to reject travel insurance payouts on grounds of alcohol consumption, found that problems often rested on how insurers defined an "unattended" vehicle.
As far as the FSO is concerned, legal precedent means a vehicle should be considered attended as long as the owner is "close enough that their presence would be likely to deter a thief".
Insurers are also too quick to conflate reckless and careless conduct, said the FSO; the former rightly cancels out a claim, but the latter should not. In one example, a care assistant whose car was stolen while she helped an elderly client into their home was vindicated after complaining to the FSO.
The thief smashed the window and used a set of car keys hidden beneath aprons under the driver's seat to steal the car, but the insurance company refused to pay on the grounds that the owner had been "reckless". The FSO ordered the insurer to pay, however, concluding that the woman had simply been careless and that the insurere had not made its rules clear enough in the first place.
In another case, a male owner arrived home from a family holiday to find his car stolen and burned out 10 miles away but both car keys were still in his house, which had not been burgled.
Only his 80-year-old neighbour had access to the property with a spare key to feed his cat. While the insurers charitably conceded the elderly lady was "unlikely to be involved", they rejected his claim, insisting that a key must have been used in the theft.
This did not pass muster with the FSO, however, who ordered the insurer to pay out the value of the car plus interest, £400 in public transport costs and compensation for inconvenience caused. So if at first you don't succeed - call the FSO.
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