Shannons nightmare

[Doug Gould]

By coincidence both my wife's car and my daughters car had incidents where they were hit by other cars while they were stationary. Both minor repairs. Both 100% not their fault. My wifes was a truck that backed into the rear tailight and dinted the rear quarter panel. My daughters as a 20km/h rear end on the freeway that doesn't need much more than a new rear bumper cover - not even the tail lights are cracked. 

Shannons has been an absolute nightmare to deal with on both counts. On both counts the vehicles are taking weeks for the claims to be assessed and approved. My wife's car has gone to a repairer of our choice who's in the Alfa family. I kind of thought the delays and absolute indifference I was meeting was maybe associated with us sending the car to a small specialist rather than one of the Suncorp network repairers. So the second car went to the repairer they nominated and the experience has been worse. I think it will be 2 months after the rear bump took place before her car will be fixed.

Shannons is a delight to deal with when you take out a policy and the guys on the phone there are smart car guys.  But the claims are handled by a phone room somewhere different. Seriously, the claims phone room makers Telstra look good. I'm struggling to get any satisfactory response from anyone in the phoneroom and I'm struggling to get past the first line of bureaucrats that put on the phones.

Does anyone have any tips on getting action from Shannons?

I'm also interested in alternatives. I have 8 cars insured with Shannons and I've used them since the mid nineties. But I don't think I want to ever go through this experience again.

[Citroënbender]

There are procedures for raising your "voice" if unhappy, start with the measures offered by Shannons themselves, if necessary progress to the the FSO if you feel the product you are paying for is not the product you understood was to be received.

LSV are possibly no better, but it's probably good practice to not have all your eggs in one basket.

[jazig.k]

We've got everything with Comminsure. Houses, contents and cars.

Had the house that we were moving into flood [burst roof pipe]. Almost a full renovation as it destroyed the whole kit ch en [apparently a SPAM word...], almost half of the internal walls and flooring everywhere. Work started the next day. Awesome to deal with doing a redesign on the whole house and worked at our pace when required [arranging materials or design decisions, even worked with us to change anything we wanted].

3 Kangaroos at 100kph in the wifes car. All occasions just dropped off that day, all finished up in less than 2 weeks.

Parked in a 45 degree bay on honeymoon, old guy dragged the whole side of his EL Falcon up the rear bumper of out BMW X5. Only a respray required but dropped off at the end of out holiday and picked up 3 days later.

Very happy with them. If they'd let me insure modified cars I'd rate them highly...

[rowan_bris]

It must depend on who you get to deal with at Shannons.  I have had excellent claims experience since the 1990s

[Doug Gould]

My past claims experience with Shannons was good and includes a vehicle write-off after a tree fell on my first 164, but I haven't made a claim in probably nearly 10 years. But this is a living hell. And its 2 cars, 2 separate claims and I've been speaking with them multiple times per week, so its not that I just got one difficult person.

I suspect that since I last made a claim, the claims department has been absorbed by the Suncorp centralised system.

[rowan_bris]

That could be right Doug.  I have had car write off claims and flood claims etc but not for a few years now.

[Darryl]

Definitely it's merged into the Suncorp borg. But I've been able to get away with just telling them what I'm doing and they have somehow coped. Specifically when:

1) In December 2014 had massive hail damage to 166. I wanted to keep it (maybe given subsequent 166 price movements I should have taken the writeoff which is what Suncorp's own assessment process would have made it) - I got my own quote from a  paintless dent repairer who's work I knew was good and they still wanted me to take it to their bulk assessment (which given the number of claims from that storm meant waiting a while for a booking - but when I got there at the agreed time I just handed the guy the quote I had, he saw it was for less than agreed value, saw what the car looked like and approved it - took a whole 10 seconds.

2) 159 sideswiped by a truck while parked a year or so ago... No info left by truck driver of course (beyond forensic evidence ). Sent photos etc in by email to support claim. My preferred (not Suncorp preferred) repairer quoted and sent that in with similar photos .  Job approved etc - absolutely no hassle.

I think maybe it helps that I just go ahead and do the "legwork" to reduce the claim process to them having to do what it takes to "approve" stuff that I've already set in motion.

[Citroënbender]

My greatest frustration with all insurers has been lack of attention to claim detail. The person you express very particular requirements to on the phone, will probably be unable to instil these details in the next person who addresses your matter. So you have to go back to the start (in terms of presenting your preferred outcome) so often in the process!

It's not just insurance; I'm fully aware this is an outcome of the Modern Office; a former colleague (who works an honest 50+ hours a week) telling me recently he had now passed 10K unread emails and the number was steadily climbing.