Be Excellent To Each Other

As I posted in the Nay thread my wife was rear ended on the M4 Thursday night.

I called my insurance company and once it was established it was “No Fault” they couldn’t help me quick enough.

After an hour on the phone a hire car as well as collection of our car for repair had been arranged. The hire car arrived the next day at 3pm.
When the car arrived (it was a Vauxhall Insignia) the Sat Nav didn’t work as the SD card was missing, not a big issue but it lead me to look at the paperwork via a web portal that had been set up for the claim. I’m also slight pissed off that I have to pay a £15 charge for them putting fuel into the car (1\4 tank) not sure how they expect to get cars to people without fuel. I still have to return the car with the same amount in the tank

They are charging the other guys insurance £90 a day for the car, I went onto Hertz last night and found I can hire a Skoda Octavia or similar (which is the same profile they used for the hire car I have) for 14 days at a cost of £280.

Then there is the “Claims” despite the insurance industry complaining that false whiplash claims are a burden to everyone and put the prices up I have been emailed, called and written to already by my own insurer’s legal dept informing me that they can “Help”. They are far too clever to get caught encouraging people but the wording is as persuasive as they can get away with.

Individual insurers look to be geared to milk other companies where they can, then they all get together to shove up prices each year blaming claim costs that they are inflating!!

Yep. This happens a lot. Blame Curiosity.

£90 a day is very cheap for insurance claim related car hire though.

It's a total racket, everything costs five times as much as it should when insurers are paying, repairs, car hire, vehicle recovery all get massively inflated. Expect to get spammed to fuck by ambulance chasers for the next five years too.

At least we don't have the same system for heathcare, amirite?

Heh, I was just about to make a similar comment. When you see this kind of corrupt bullshit in the car insurance industry (and similar practises in US healthcare with things like how they decided what to charge for services/drugs depending on circumstance) it boggles the mind that anyone would ever argue for an insurance based healthcare system.

It's really not very mind boggling when you consider that most of the corrupt bastard tory scumbags arguing for it have investments in private healthcare.

Well, yeah; I was thinking more though of the Actual Real People in places like the US that decry any alternative as terrible commie bullshit while getting fucked left and right. Seeing masses of turkeys voting for Christmas in the US shouldn't really be surprising any more I suppose, but it's still always depressing.

I remember when I used the "upto £300" bank account provided insurance for plumbing on an issue with my shower at my old house

I did some investigations and found that the shower system was very high quality and has been bought at a local shop a mile away from my house, I then found out that the manufacture did 10 year guarantees and would send me the broken part for nothing.

They send out these plumbers from Portsmouth, some 60 miles from my house, they had no interest in anything I said. They told me that had to buy parts from one place and spent 2 days "finding the part" they then said I would have to pay £250 as well as the £300 quid from the insurance.

Then they lost interest as my place was out of their area, so I got the part myself and paid a local plumber £100 which I then got back from the insurance.

I'm not going to take the bait unduly on this nth occasion, but:

(a) Most people who want to see an efficient, fair, insurance-based (or other private sector led) universal healthcare system in the UK are neither scumbags nor healthcare shareholders, myself included.

(b) Everyone bangs on about the straw man that is the USA when NO ONE is advocating the UK adopts their model, least of all me, but in fact are looking enviously Europe-wards at the many objectively better performing systems that have been operating very successfully - for the much enhanced benefits of all of their citizens (cancer survival rates, quality of care, satisfaction, waiting lists, cleanliness - you name it, really) - with none of these types of problems.

(c) Unlike you, Mark, I have no vested or political interest in this and I neither work for the NHS or any private healthcare firm or anything like it. So my views, unlike yours, are based on hard headed, fair minded, rational, empirical truths, not tiresome (laughably outmoded) political dogma and/or emotive bullshit. I just want things to be a lot better than they are now and don't really mind how that's achieved (except, that is, Labour's perennial response which is just to throw more of someone else's money at a broken system), which would not be hard, but you'll never get your head around this concept.

While this is no doubt in part true, that well-touted list of 'MPs and Lords with a financial stake in privatising healthcare' is the most ludicrous nonsense I've ever seen. One MP has shares in BT! BT sell phone lines to Bupa! ZOMG corruption!

Aaarrgghh. The model this government (the Tory scumbags who I was specifically referring to, though I could have made this clearer) are not modelling their NHS reforms on anything like one of the European models.

The NHS performs comparatively well by most objective measures with very few systems delivering better returns for the money invested.

It's just the kind of hysterical, fundamentalist, smearing BS that has held us back from rectifying the many mistakes of the past, not only in healthcare but also education. Personally I think political vanity lies at the root of it all, in the final analysis. Quite simply, an inability to ever say, or even think 'we got it wrong'.

I think more or less every clinician would agree with that sentiment and question why these reforms, for which the government have no real mandate (remember Cameron promising no top down reorganisations?), are being forced through.

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publica ... _campaign=

That report doesn't indicate to me that the NHS needs anything except funding comparative to other systems and attention in certain areas. Anyone who reckons that report will look better a few years down the line if these current reforms are allowed to run their course is a fool.

Sorry Mark, I have neither the time nor inclination to bash my head against this brick wall yet again. You can't see it, refuse to see it, and will never see it, ever, and no amount of information, argument, evidence, comparison to other systems, shameful scandals and all the rest will ever change that, not by so much as one hair's breadth, ever. The epitome of the closed mind. Sorry.

I just posted a comparison to other systems by an organisation respected for doing exactly that, the link was even from a Torygraph article. But fair enough. That's precisely how I see your view of it all. Bit like your take on global warming, no amount of evidence will ever sway you.

The current NHS system is No. 1 in the world across a wide breadth of measures, and is also one of the cheapest out there.
Sure, it's fucked up in the way it is run in a lot of ways, but the fact it is still No. 1 is testament to how good it really is in comparison the alternatives. It's the single best thing the UK government has ever done.

By all means spend some effort making it even better, but only within the bounds of the current system, don't change it, it's the only thing we have in the country that actually works...

By the same token I've previously linked to all manner of reports comparing the performance of the NHS to other European healthcare systems, as conducted by respected pan-European organisations with absolutely no axe to grind whatsoever, be that political or commercial, but you've always poo-pooed these in exactly the same way you've done the same in response to objectively hopeless cancer survival rates, quality of care issues, waiting lists and quite appalling scandals. Sorry to say, but I simply cannot be bothered to go through it all again and am busy, so haven't read this link/report because I think it's very likely it's either some cherry picked information and/or you've misinterpreted it to suit your vested interest and arguments?

I really don't want this to sound rude, Mark, even though it probably does; to be clear I like you and would buy you a pint if we ever meet. But just like you think I can never change my mind, as perplexing as that is for me since I do it all the time including here, I think the same of you. So there's no point.

The whole global warming thing is another can of worms that I'm not gonna open again, but to say that I have never denied it but merely point out that the actual global temperature trends do not, even remotely, follow predictions and it seems common sense to at least question their potential veracity on this basis; there seems to be an awful lot of after-the-fact-lets-make-the-models-fit-actual-data going on, that I see rather a lot of in my profession anyway, when people get their models wrong. To me, this doesn't seem too unreasonable a stance to take, but to others it makes me a beast. Which, to be honest, I eventually tire of such shrill, pseudo-cultish nonsense.

Fair enough.

You're wrong, but, fair enough.

They are writing mine off, its a 56 with 90K on it. Still I liked it and its been looked after.

So was pretty pissed of as I don't really like buying cars.

I had a look around and found this

http://www.skoda.net.r66.co.uk/carview. ... 604453331#

So every cloud has a silver lining Mid life crisis car!!

Very nice. They are impressively quick and handle very nicely for a "family car".
Do it.

When I started to look at replacing the car, I was looking at cars around 6-8K they were all 40,000 miles less that the old car and 2-3 years newer.

At this point my wife chips in that she wants less miles, newer car and DSG as we have that on the Superb Estate and its so much better that manual.

So this car is 2010, 20,000 on the clock and DSG, now its " I Don't want a VRS" she doesn't know what VRS means, neither do I but I get its fast and will attach 20 something girls to me like magic, until they see the Skoda badge and my beer gut

What I heard was once upon a time, Skoda released a model with an RS name tagged onto the end of it, and Ford took them to court, and lost. The 'v' (it's a little v) either stands for 'victory' or it's Skoda sticking their fingers up at Ford, and shouldn't be pronounced.

It's still badged as the RS in some countries.
http://www.skoda-auto.com/en/models/new-octavia-rs/

Please point me in the direction of the car rental website you used where you could hire a family sized car for 2 weeks for £280, as that is ridiculously cheap!

£90 a day is clearly taking the piss, but it's not so ridiculously excessive really.

And reading this thread...crikey, I'm hoping the tampons dry out soon gents!

Some pretty daft name-calling and rattles being thrown out of prams - all nicely glossed over with a veneer of eloquent language of course. Not you Bamba.

The NHS stuff, one assumes.

It was more that I've never heard the phrase 'hoping the tampons dry out soon' before. Also: if daft name-calling and rattles being thrown out of prams isn't your type of thing you might have picked the wrong forum to join...

Welcome to Beex!

Haha...you really don't know me yet My comments in themselves are mildly inflammatory and may warrant a bite from said gents...all glossed over with a veneer of eloqunce, of course! I just thought I'd goad the chap that kept saying "I'm not going to bite at this..." followed by the implied "You're a wanker" and a massive response.

I'm surprised Bamba didn't react to you calling him ineloquent

I DUNT NO HOW 2 WURDZ!

Its gone up a bit now, £317 for 2 weeks starting 21st July

That looks much more like a standard Hertz price.

I'm impressed you could glean so much from a screenshot of the Hertz website. I shall liken you to Miss Marple in my head from now on.

I prefer Poirot.

Although I don't have a moustache.

And I'm skinny.

And I'm not French.

I am an Actual Detective though. And a real man. So I've basically nailed it.

Meh, my toys are never IN the flaming pram, there are none of the fecking things left to chuck.

I thought it was pretty mild by our standards but have no problem with tampon jokes being thrown (er, metaphorically) in my direction by teh forum noobs ( ), as I've no doubt they're due.

Neither's Poirot

Malc

That Belgian bastard.

Mummy and Old Man Afterthought were involved in a smasheroo the other day. No injuries as it was farily low speed, and it's a Motability car anyway, so no real fiscal loss for them. Anyhow, within a couple of hours a person was on the phone trying to get them to claim for "inconvenience". I'm not sure what the deal is with the car, now, but I know they've ordered another Fiesta for August, or, in fact, how motability even works (I understand that Mummy Afterthought doesn't get a disability allowance, instead it goes towards leasing of a car, but if you pay £x you can get a better car than a Fiesta). It's proabbly what increases the costs, people wanting the extras and I guess we all pay for them, and choose the polciies that offer them, these hired cars and the like, I dunno, ask Curio.

I'm getting so sick of all the people involved

Its gone, Insurance Company--Some sort of car hire and repair coordinator company--Car Hire Company--Repair Shop-- Back to car hire and repair Company "engineers"--Some other company that is going to give me a figure for my car".

I was told by my insurers that I would get glass car valuation forecourt price, no idea why there needs to be a whole organisation to deal with this, I paid to get the price myself yesterday so will be interesting to see if they try to come in lower.

You shouldn't accept Glass's guide price if you don't think you could actually replace the car for that. When my wife's car got written off I didn't like the value they had given so I ended up on the phone with someone from the insurance company as we both went on the Autotrader website and searched for similar cars. Finally found an example at a dealer that we both agreed was representative and he just paid me that price. Ended up getting a pretty fair deal that way.

Claims experiences tend to be split according to what kind of handler you get. If you're unlucky you get idiots who think the company's money is their own (or who work for a company that incentivises that behaviour). If you're lucky, you get a smart one that understands that the claims experience is a selling point just as much as the cost, and deals with you to try to actually give you the service you have paid for.

Ultimately, if they're being assholes, mutter about 'Treating Customers Fairly', 'positive consumer outcomes' and demand to be passed on to someone who has a healthy fear of those phrases

The Glass price was £4500, so they offered me £3600. They said there was damage to the bumper (scrapes) and also a small dent in the bonnet that if I could have been arsed I could have got out with half a tennis ball or something.

There is no way that lot is worth £900 so I told the company no, called my insurers and asked them to take the claim back and deal with it. Aside from the company who have the car I'm not speaking to anyone else now aside from my insurer.

Also I've been looking at another car, so I called up a dealer around 70 miles away and asked them to deliver me this car as well as a bit of extra stuff on the deal. He is saying I have to go and see it for Distance Selling, my mate said this is rubbish as he bought an 11 month old car from his wife from a place 250 miles away and they just delivered it.

The dealer is in Bournemouth and I don't fancy going there on the hottest weekend of the year to date!

Nothing good ever came out of Bournemouth

That dealership as such dicks, its the bloke in charge who won't deliver unless I go and see it.

So can't be bothered now and have bought an pretty much identical car for £5 more which has Sat Nav included from a saner dealer