Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Have just found out that I have been driving around with NO car insurance, despite having a local insurance office/exclusve agent dealing with the matter here in my local town.

OH and I took out car insurance on my lease car, good price etc etc, gave credit card information and all is ticketty boo - or so I thought until the policy document kept failing to arrive from "head office". To cut a very long story much shorter - both OH and I had been into the office, chasing up and asking "where is the policy" to be told variously:

• "it was with the underwriters but that everything was fine and that the policy would be in the post shortly"
• "policy had been posted and must have got mislaid in the mail, we will get one reissued"
• "computer glitch meant that the policy was held up in the system"

this week I decided to get to the bottom of it, now starting to get pissed off and suspicious, and after further visits to the office, multiple and stroppy emails (to which he never replied - to avoid written evidence no doubt) finally managed to get him on the phone to be told "you are not covered".

Naturally, I was not best pleased at this news, to be told that although I thought I had taken out car insurance, had been told I had car insurance and all was well, that in fact OH and I (and our young children) had been riding around in a car for 6 or 7 weeks with NO INSURANCE!!!!

Curt and to the point email was then despatched to the insurance "exclusive agent" to the effect that we were not even remotely happy about this and had decided to take out car insurance with another provider, considering our faith in their ability to handle the matter was much reduced.

Insurance now taken out with AAA and 1 hour later the temporary policy with in my email in box and within 3 days in my mail box.

Does anyone know whether there is an auto insurance Ombudsman like organisation that i could lodge a complaint with? Many thanks!

:mad:

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Did the car dealership verify your insurance status with the insurance company before you took possession of the car? I realise it may differ from state to state but in NJ it is a legal requirement.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Yes they did, thats what confuses me even more.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Thanks Ray.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Have you checked your local Better Business Bureau for info on the auto insurance company you're having problems with? Also, did you pay by credit card for the insurance? If so, if I were you, I'd get a refund via your credit card company because the vendor failed to provide you with what you paid for.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Thank you for that, will check it all out. I was sent into a panic and just wanted to get proper cover. I do need to sort out refunds from the original agent.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

If they paid by credit card that would prove they should have insurance cover.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

This happened to us too, although in our case the agent really didn't realise she hadn't issued the policy correctly. We'd done 13,000 miles by the time she realised...

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

The car dealership, only needs proof of a 30 day binder of coverage...... which I presume is what the insurance company gave them.
a binder is not a policy.


the agent doesn't issue a policy, the company does.

We had a case in our small town of a woman in an independent agency issueing binders for new policies and pocketing the cash.
and when customers came in and asked for their policies, were just given out new binders.
Of course the binders were more than useless and when the inevitable happened and a poor soul had a crash only to find they had no coverage.

The insurance agent is now in jail for fraud.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

So this wouldn't be a good time to ask how it's going (in general) then...:D

I have nothing to add other than I hate insurance... I regard it as a unavoidable evil.

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

This is what got my mate Nofio Pecora extradited from the UK and doing 2 yeasr in Louisiana state nick.


Mind you ...he did so $7 odd millions worth.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news...4/26/41470.htm

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

Sounds like a family business...

Re: Car Insurance - or lack of!! Ombudsman info request.
 

I never met his mother..obviously as she was doing time. But he was (and still is) a good friend. Had many a good night in his pub and on the golf course. I knew he was on the run from the US but never asked and was never told...I just assumed those greedy bastards at the IRS were after him.