The murky world of car insurance claims

Sir — I read with interest any articles I see written about car insurance and all of the major frauds that are being perpetrated by the motorist. As one of your contributors (Letters,

Sunday Independent, May 27) mentioned, if this is the case why are there no court prosecutions?

There have been very few claims thrown out of court because the judge thought they were fraudulent or the evidence did not quite stand up. The question I would like to raise is: what about the continuous bad practices being knowingly carried out by the insurance companies themselves in cahoots with ‘nominated garages’?

I will give an example, of which I am aware: a driver of a 2001 Micra skidded on ice into a 2005 Fiesta, causing damage to the left front-wing of the Micra and right rear-wing of the Fiesta. Both drivers took their cars to independent, but different panel-beaters, who assessed the damage to the Micra at €300-350 and the damage to the Fiesta at €400-450. Because the driver of the Micra was at fault and could not afford the cost of repair to both cars, he decided to put it through his insurance, knowing he was leaving the country shortly before his insurance would be due for renewal and would therefore not be liable for loss of his no-claims bonus. He was advised, as was the owner of the Fiesta, to take their cars to a garage nominated by the insurance company.

The result was an insurance bill of close to €3,500 to cover the cost of repair to both vehicles. In fact the insurance company wanted to write off the Micra because of its age, despite the car only having 29,000 genuine miles on the clock and in perfect condition apart from a few small scrapes on one side.

The result was that the insurance company paid for the repair of the Fiesta and offered the value (their value) of the Micra less scrappage to the driver of the Micra, who had it repaired for €350.

I cannot be convinced that insurance companies are not aware of this and fraud is the only term I can use where garages are hiking up the repair bills to profit from the beleaguered motorist.

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