Crime Victim Faced With Unsympathetic Insurance Company

Jan 27 2012

When you sign up for a car loan for your dream wheels, the last thing on your mind is probably that one day you will crash that car while trying to escape from villains – or that your insurance company would be less than sympathetic with your plight.

This, however, is exactly what happened to David Lloyd from Manchester recently.  He was driving home when a teenage girl stumbled into the road right in front of his car.  He stopped – and immediately she started to attack the vehicle.  Two male friends joined her and they also started punching him through the open window of the car.

By this time David feared for his life.  He attempted to drive away and in the confusion he hit another car.  The teenagers then assaulted him again.  He sustained serious injuries in the process.

David said “The awful memories will haunt me for a very long time.”

What happened next only added to his woes: when he submitted a claim to Direct Line, they told him that they considered the incident as two separate claims – one for the damage caused by vandalism and the other one for the crash.

The company has a policy that submitting two claims within the same year makes the policyholder lose his no claims discount – which took David 20 years to build up.

Direct Line also considers him to be the driver at fault in the collision and they, therefore, re-classified him as a high-risk driver – and increased his wife’s premiums from £36.78 to £51.79 per month.

The matter has been referred to the Financial Ombudsman.

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