interestrateripoff Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1376738/Judges-anger-3-scaffolders-make-70k-injury-claim-1-mph-van-crash.html Scaffolders tried to claim thousands in compensation after a council van collided with their lorry - at one mile an hour.Town hall chiefs faced a £70,000 bill following the bump in slow-moving traffic. The driver, James Stubbs of Bolton, and two passengers in the lorry, Thomas and Gareth Gemmell, claimed they suffered whiplash, and launched personal injury claims for £3,700. Their bosses also submitted a £6,430 claim for damage to the vehicle and 'loss of use'. Surprisingly none of these people wish to comment on the matter. I wonder how many of these slow accident claims get paid out costing everyone ultimately a fortune in higher insurance fees? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHERWICK Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 http://www.dailymail...-van-crash.html Surprisingly none of these people wish to comment on the matter. I wonder how many of these slow accident claims get paid out costing everyone ultimately a fortune in higher insurance fees? + an extra fortune in council tax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 tbh the bit that catches me out is the 50k legal costs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
profitofdoom Posted April 15, 2011 Share Posted April 15, 2011 tbh the bit that catches me out is the 50k legal costs! TBH the insurance companies bring it on themselves.I had a 100% no fault ,17 year old hit me head on,accident filmed on CCTV and he was prosecuted.NFU Mutual fought the case to court trying to get me to accept 33% liability.When the judge laughed their case out of court and doubled my lawyer's fees (That is what happens on no win no fee) they picked up the £200k tab. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Number79 Posted April 15, 2011 Share Posted April 15, 2011 TBH the insurance companies bring it on themselves.I had a 100% no fault ,17 year old hit me head on,accident filmed on CCTV and he was prosecuted.NFU Mutual fought the case to court trying to get me to accept 33% liability.When the judge laughed their case out of court and doubled my lawyer's fees (That is what happens on no win no fee) they picked their customers will pick up the £200k tab. corrected for reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porca misèria Posted April 15, 2011 Share Posted April 15, 2011 TBH the insurance companies bring it on themselves. It's worse than that. They actually train people to defraud them: March is the time of year my home insurance comes up for renewal. This year I took the time to shop around using online price comparisons, and found a far better deal than my existing insurer. No great surprise there. I gave it a while to mull over, and read the new insurer’s cover in detail. Compared to the old one it’s actually rather more comprehensive. For just over half the price! OK, let’s order this one, and cancel the old one. The renewal notice from the old one has a freephone line. So I ‘phoned it, and after a couple of menus I was through to a customer service person. He was of course keen to quote me the best deal (and was perfectly pleasant about it) so I agreed to let him give me a quote. When he mentioned a very low excess, my reaction was one of Good Lord! In that case I should’ve claimed when my friend’s dog ripped my coat! Before that conversation it hadn’t even crossed my mind to claim on insurance for that. His reaction was instant and clearly automatic: I should have been able to claim against my friend’s insurance. Yep, it’s all about shifting liability. My reaction was a slightly-horrified What? It’s hardly something to go around suing my friends over! Two different mindsets, and the insurers win because people don’t claim. But what if I got over my instinctive revulsion at the idea of suing my friend? Just treated it as a business transaction: no hard feelings, no guilt? That’s what I should be doing in my insurer’s world! They’re pushing us into being cold, calculating, and ruthless. Discounting such nebulous irrelevancies as friendship. From where I sit, that’s a big hurdle to making a claim. But if I were to cross that hurdle, surely the logical next step is on to fraud, as in let’s just lump in existing damage or wear-and-tear with what the dog did[1]. That step is surely much smaller than the hurdle I’ve crossed to claim against my friend. And from there it’s small steps to much bigger fraud. It seems a logical conclusion that insurers have only themselves to blame when they suffer large scale fraud, such as staged car accidents. They’ve trained us to think that way! Oh, and yes I did switch my home insurance. As well as my stuff (which I’m unlikely to claim for unless I suffer catastrophic loss like a big fire or burglary), it explicitly covers things like tenant liability if I were to burn down my landlord’s property, and of course the usual third-party things if I were held liable for something while out walking or cycling. [1] there wasn’t any with the coat in question, which was brand new just a week earlier. But that’s not the point! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
profitofdoom Posted April 15, 2011 Share Posted April 15, 2011 corrected for reality. Well of course we know that.But it was my point exactly,just how cavalier these people are with their customer's premiums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted April 16, 2011 Share Posted April 16, 2011 It's worse than that. They actually train people to defraud them: There's nothing unique in insurance about that. That's just the way everything works these days, and why I despise so much of it. If you don't think like that you're regarded as a naive fool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shipbuilder Posted April 16, 2011 Share Posted April 16, 2011 There's nothing unique in insurance about that. That's just the way everything works these days, and why I despise so much of it. If you don't think like that you're regarded as a naive fool. In the world of economics we are cold, calculating individualists and everything can be measured in terms of money and market prices. Thinking of the real world in the same way has serious consequences and we see them every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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