I thought I would do a little update on the status of the stolen Fiesta, especially after we got a letter about it yesterday.
A couple of weeks ago we had a call from an engineer, who said that the car was unrepairable, and then told me how much he thought our car was worth, which was £250. I thought this was ok, not what I was expecting, but at least a little bit. However, I found out that this was minus any excess we had on the policy. So as our excess is £200 we would only be seeing £50! It isn't even enough to get another policy, let alone buy a new car. I phoned up a guy at Privilege, but after 10 minutes of trying to get him to give me more money for it I gave up.
The other day I got another letter. Actually for some reason Privilege seem to find the need to send me two letters for everything I do, which I find a little odd. Especially as they send the letters on different days. This means that we get a letter, Mandy spends her afternoon trying to sort it out, and then two days later we get another letter, so Mandy spends another afternoon trying to get them to understand her a second time. The really irritating thing is that they have sent us 3 renewal notices, despite the fact that they know for certain that it is in a scrap yard.
So we got another letter that had a cheque enclosed. See if you can work out what they meant from the following quote.
Policy Excess: £200
We write to advise you that your vehicle is beyond economical repair.
Your vehicle has been inspected by an Independent Engineer, and the market value
has been assessed at the figure of £00050.00.
The Policy Excess will be deducted from this figure.
If you disagree with the Engineer's valuation, please contact us as soon as
possible. You may still bank the cheque, as this will not prejudice your position.
Should we not hear from you within the next fourteen days, arrangements will
be made to dispose of the vehicle.
A cheque for £00250.00 will be forwarded to you under a separate cover.
Don't worry, it took me several attempts! From this it looks like we have a cheque for £250 and that we have to give back £50 of this, or is it that we have to pay them £250 and then... oh never mind.
Apparently the woman who typed this got the numbers mixed up, which doesn't make sense as the numbers look like they where computer generated from a database or something. But when Mandy phoned her up she had to use a calculator to work out the complicated maths involved here.
All in all the only thing this has taught me is that if your car is worth less than £1000 then there is no point going for fully comprehensive insurance. Oh, and that insurance companies are only there to rip you off. I won't be going for Privilege in the future, but I don't know if any other insurance company will be any different. Are they all con artists?
What really, really annoys me about Privilege, in fact this whole thing, is that even though none of this was our fault, because Mandy has made a claim she has lost her 5 years of no claims bonus. There doesn't exist in the English language a phrase or description, lacking corse language, that gets anywhere near identifying the idiot who stole my car.