Car fire / insurance company!!! Please help

[Freespirit98]

I'm just looking for some advice / similar experiences?

Our car set on fire on our baby girls 1st birthday day out on the way home on the motorway :( obviously such a scary experience, trying to unstrap my girl from her seat took probably 30 seconds with my shakey hands, but It felt like 30 minutes. It was so scary, it just burst into flames and my partner was saying pull over. I ran down the hard shoulder with her and people were stopping to film us. Absolute idiots. Still traumatised now it was the 25th May.

Anyway on to the point of my post, I phoned the insurance and told them, they said the impound costs are my responsibility from highways even though I have breakdown cover? I then got a letter from highways to say where the car is, and that it will be scrapped in 5 days if I don't pay, told the insurance this, they said they will bring the car to my address, bare in mind firemen had to smash the window as the car wouldn't shut off. It was full of smoke by the time we got away. They said its too damaged to come to my address it will be going somewhere else. This was a week after the accident I thought they'd of viewed the car by now a month later? What are insurance for? This is AVIVA by the way.

It's now been 1 month, and they've done nothing, not viewed the car, not told me the outcome, told Me if its mechanical I won't be paid out which I understand, but just let me know? Is this fair should they take 1 month?

I've had £50 compensation for my first complaint and I've heard nothing since. They don't care unless they are taking your money it seems :(

What can I do? I've sent an email, no reply, they said a lot of people won't speak to me as my policy Is "online only" which wasn't mentioned to me when I took it out. So I can only communicate via email, but they don't reply ha.

I don't know what to do. These people are horrible. And they don't care even though I spend crazy amounts of money paying them monthly

Hi, I'm sorry to hear what happened that sounds very scary! My sons car went on fire suddenly in our residents car park a couple of years ago - unfortunately the fire spread to a neighbours car & both were written off! Son was insured with Direct Line & fire brigade sent them a report that fire started under bonnet & no suspicious circumstances & he had payout within 72 hours. It was an old car so maybe that made the process much quicker? My neighbours car was a newer more expensive model but his company paid out relatively quickly too. I'm not sure why your insurance company being so difficult - it's obviously not your fault if car catches fire as you're driving it. Sorry not got any advice but I wish you good luck with progressing your claim.

We paid Aviva for many years thinking they were a good insurer. When it came to a write-off (100% other party’s fault, and admitted) Aviva were utterly useless.

They happily wasted our time and money. Many of their people were sarcastic and rude during phone calls.

We had to do all the work ourselves. The other party used Saga insurance, and they were awkward and disinterested. We had to deal direct with their customer in the end. Saga then told us we had no right to contact him. All in all an extremely stressful experience of course.

Eventually we had to take County Court action to get our money for the destroyed car. Aviva no help, Saga no help, and the driver no help. Disgusting people all round. At the court hearing nobody turned up and the judge was furious on our behalf. His resolution was hugely in our favour as we had been careful to be scrupulously fair with everything.

Since then we’ve had car and house insurance problems with different companies. All of these companies seem fine until there’s a claim, then they just do not want to know.

Sorry this does not help you – you have my sympathies on this ridiculous situation. I hope you can get them to be decent, but don’t hold your breath.

What policy do you have? Are you fully comprehensive, if so they should pay up

Well (continuing from above} we’ve always been fully comp with all bells and whistles. It’s made no difference to their automatic unwillingness to pay a claim. Things have changed a lot from the 70s and 80s, where the whole point of insurance was that ‘the few’ with losses were easily covered by ‘the masses’ with no claim.

Nowadays it’s just pull in the money in any possible way and resist claims to the bitter end. It’s only in recent years that we’ve had to resort to using ombudsmen and county courts.

In our experience they’re just hoping you will give up and go away.