Insurance companies?

Hopefully, I never find out, the days when the NRMA was a loved-up Co-Op of friendly car repair blokes are a bit of a distant memory, even if they do have a friendly staff. One great clause is the wreak remands my property in all cases.
 
DaveB said:
Well, I was very happy with my visit to Shannon’s, after my online attempt for a quote crashed and burned.
I now have the everyday MV on comprehensive, as is the classic rego Morini, as well as the Bandit, Le Mans and 1100 Sport on layover cover for about $1100. My eldest daughter is an insurance broker and she could not get me better cover pricing.

Single plate cover is something we should agitate for - other countries manage it, Canada mentioned and I think maybe Belgium does as well. Every time you register another vehicle as a sole operator you’re cross-subsidising the 3rd party insurance system…
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I have 12 classic bikes on one plate in Switzerland. For normal bikes it is max 2. Not only insurance but road tax as well. The same applies for cars. Ofcourse vehicles without a plate need to be parked on private property. And technical inspections for classics is every 6 years only.
 
Beucars said:
I have 12 classic bikes on one plate in Switzerland. For normal bikes it is max 2. Not only insurance but road tax as well. The same applies for cars. Ofcourse vehicles without a plate need to be parked on private property. And technical inspections for classics is every 6 years only.
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That is what we want here.
But alas…
 
I had a car issue the other day, lost control of the ability to shift gears in my Automatic. Waited 20 minutes for the NRMA service bloke expecting to get a tow. He spent an hour looking for a fix, found it and got me going again with a temporary cable tie holding the linkage together. All free after paying the annual road assist fee. Brilliant bit of Machanicing on a 40c day.
 
I see the smashed up bikes at work, don't usually get involved with the insurance companies, but last week the sales guy got cleaned up out the front of the shop by a bmw x7, i wrote the list of damage, which included a dented frame (write off), NRMA wrote a letter to us saying sales guy was at fault. WTF! Woman came into the shop and admitted liability, witnesses to the crash confirm what she did. Insurance companies are the worst.
 
Yer I know, I got a bunch of free stock when they demutualised decades ago and I knew that co-op attitude was gone then. The best job I ever had was working for an Insurance Company, you think banks have money to burn but they are peanuts compared to insurance companies. The one I worked for spent 3 years with a staff of about 100 and spent tens of millions developing some kind of computer system, and after all that, they merged with a competitor and junked all that work. I had the pleasure of removing the couple of hundred Otto bins of paper they dumped with that decision. All a complete waste, except it, employed some for a while including me.
 
But DaveB,
I pay $88 AUD for registration and 3rd party bodily injury ins on my Jota which gives me 90 days to use over 12 months.
Club rego for vehicles older than 25 years in Sth Aust. Only other cost is staying financial with a recognized club, $35 annually.
SteveG pays $510 Cdn a year for 5 classics on one plate.
So currently for 5 bikes of similar capacity it would cost me $560 AUD for [5 @ 90days each] = 450 days.

As for Shannons paying out, the only experience I've had is my nephew [we are pretty close] who wrote of his holden ute in the first year of being with them no problem with getting a pay out but wouldn't insure him again for 5 years. He is now back with them with a another ute.
Hope I never have to claim cause that may include much physical pain, I'm allergic to pain.

Just saying, :unsure:
 
Andy said:
Everyone seems to be talking about premiums. From experience, premiums don’t really matter two shits, claims is where the rubber hits the road. What are they like then?
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This. Got to first of all check what is and isn't covered by each individual policy, then also consider the experience when claiming.
Unfortunately I've had to make a few claims with Shannons (for cars and house) over the last ~10 years and to be honest it's been a good or excellent experience every time. I've had two cars written off (a no-fault collision and hail storm), both were paid out full agreed value within days. I've also done minor damage to two other cars (hit a roo and biffed the front bumper lip on a gutter) which were sorted easily, the latter even with my preferred repairer. The hail storm and roo both show up on my file as 'at fault accident' which annoys me, but would be the same for every company I guess. I've not had any problems since making those claims, but have been with them for 20-odd years I guess so they can see my overall record.
I've also had to get three windscreens replaced in the time I've lived out here in the sticks commuting on the Kings Highway. They won't cough up for factory glass if there's a generic alternative but otherwise it was just a matter of booking in with OBriens and getting them to come to me, didn't cost me a cent.
The only thing that annnoys me is that when you're calling about sales you get the aussie motoring enthusiast type people, whereas when making a claim your initial line of contact by phone you're just another suncorp customer punted to an offshore call centre. To avoid that, the last two claims I just did online, submitted everything online and got either a reply email or call the next day to make arrangements. Pretty good really.
When my Audi got trashed by the hailstorm a friend had a very similar car (year or two older) in the same storm, he was with someone else. Shannons do agreed value so I got paid the full $24k as per the policy within days of it being assessed, he got offered $8k which they claimed was market valve. Big difference.
Overall I'm still very happy with them, but the more and more mainstream push concerns me and the obviously different call centres when claiming seems a bit obvious. Premiums have shot up across the board since about 2019 with all the fires, floods, storms and whatnot. Sadly it'll probably only get worse.
 
I've only had one claim with Shannons in the 15 or so years I've been insured with them (so they've done pretty well out of me). A couple of years ago, some idiot left a supermarket trolley behind my car in a shopping centre car park. I didn't walk around the back of my car to get in it, and it was right up against the rear bumper so not visible in any of the mirrors (my vehicle is a van, so the trolley was well below the view out of the rear window). I only became aware of the trolley when I backed out of the parking spot, heard the trolley wheels skitter along the bitumen surface as I shunted it, and saw it take off down the hill (car park has quite a slope). It built up a fair bit of speed before ricocheting off two cars like a mad game of billiards, damaging them both. Then it shot across the road into a service station, hit the kerb next to the petrol pumps, flipped onto its side and eventually came to a halt. It narrowly missed a few other cars on its wild odyssey. There was nothing I could do but watch the delinquent trolley as the carnage unfolded. I went over to retrieve the trolley and apologise to the service station guy, and he said "No worries mate. It happens all the time".

I wasn't sure that I'd be covered, since my car didn't actually hit the other vehicles, but Shannons accepted the claim and sorted it very quickly. They treated the two damaged cars as one claim, so I only had to pay one excess. While it was officially my fault, they understood that it was really the fault of the cretin who parked the trolley on my rear bumper and recorded it as a no-fault claim. The claim process took about 15 minutes and that was the end of my involvement. Shannons did all the liaising with the other drivers or their insurers. It was as painless and hassle-free as it could have been.
 
Have had 2 claims with Shannons in the past few years. Service was excellent all done over the phone. They were quite happy for me to repair my bike myself .Also they paid me extra $500 for my barely scratched leathers which I didn't ask for very very easy to deal with, plus pay by the month $17 per. Pretty good I reckon.
 
I had my Pantah insured with Swann when I wrote it off about 1995. The write off value was abysmal.
Had a 64 Fairlane with Shannons in late 80s. It was the last US assembled RHD model for export before we made our own Fairlanes with the ZA. As a consequence when the "zone toughened" windscreen shattered into a million pieces the zone toughened section (which only shattered into 100 pieces) was on the left hand side. I guess we didn't have ADRs back then o_O I found a new replacement laminated screen, it was $600 plus $60 to fit it. That was about half what I'd paid for the car a couple years earlier. I thought Shannons would tell me to pissoff but they weren't fazed. Paid straight away.
That was so long ago it's probably pretty irrelevant to how they operate these days, but I'm still with them with my Laverda. The agreed value goes up each year with a small increase to my premium.
 
Dellortoman said:
I've only had one claim with Shannons in the 15 or so years I've been insured with them (so they've done pretty well out of me). A couple of years ago, some idiot left a supermarket trolley behind my car in a shopping centre car park. I didn't walk around the back of my car to get in it, and it was right up against the rear bumper so not visible in any of the mirrors (my vehicle is a van, so the trolley was well below the view out of the rear window). I only became aware of the trolley when I backed out of the parking spot, heard the trolley wheels skitter along the bitumen surface as I shunted it, and saw it take off down the hill (car park has quite a slope). It built up a fair bit of speed before ricocheting off two cars like a mad game of billiards, damaging them both. Then it shot across the road into a service station, hit the kerb next to the petrol pumps, flipped onto its side and eventually came to a halt. It narrowly missed a few other cars on its wild odyssey. There was nothing I could do but watch the delinquent trolley as the carnage unfolded. I went over to retrieve the trolley and apologise to the service station guy, and he said "No worries mate. It happens all the time".

I wasn't sure that I'd be covered, since my car didn't actually hit the other vehicles, but Shannons accepted the claim and sorted it very quickly. They treated the two damaged cars as one claim, so I only had to pay one excess. While it was officially my fault, they understood that it was really the fault of the cretin who parked the trolley on my rear bumper and recorded it as a no-fault claim. The claim process took about 15 minutes and that was the end of my involvement. Shannons did all the liaising with the other drivers or their insurers. It was as painless and hassle-free as it could have been.
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That’s quite a story. You weren’t auditioning for a lampoon type film at all?😁
Glad it was sorted in your favour.
 
My wife had an empty plastic shopping trolley that rolled down into a vw transporter a few metres away, the owner woman claimed it had cracked her tail light and got my wife's phone number. A few months later the woman's insurance company rang my wife asking about the collision she had been in with this transporter with many thousands of crowns damage to panels etc. When she heard what had happened she apologised and said to forget about it.
 
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