I recently received a letter from DVLA informing me that somebody was trying to register my car. The license number was that of a Red Honda Prelude that had been written off four years ago after I hit a deer on the A30 dual carriageway at night. I remember being amazed at the time that it had been written off; there was only minor frontal damage and the car was drivable, all be it with a leaking radiator. Direct Line offered me exactly half what I’d paid for the car less than 12 months previously and that was the end of that. No arguing on my part got me my car back and I was forced to accept their paltry offer. The car was taken away on the back of a lorry and I assumed that was “case closed”.
Of course I should have known better. Direct Line had never written the vehicle off at all, it was most likely repaired quite cheaply and auctioned off as if nothing had ever happened to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Direct Line didn’t even manage to make a profit out of it, only having paid me half the cars value. They never bothered to fill in any paperwork so for the next four years, the car remained registered in my name. God knows where it was all that time and who was driving it at my risk.
Everyone knows that insurance companies suck. Every year the premium goes up and we go through that old routine of getting a better quote from someone else and going backwards and forwards between various agents, all the time knowing that we’ll do it all over again next year. Not much changes, except that the voices on the end of the phone are now either in Scotland or India where call centres are becoming indigenous.
I conclude that all insurance companies are fraudsters, with the big players like Direct Line sat proudly on top of the steaming pile. How on earth do they get away with such awful business practices and customer care? This is perhaps the one and only scam that it’s illegal not to participate in.