This month, premier insurance company Aviva announced profits of a whopping £2.5 billion. This is a six per cent increase on their figures from last year, along with shares that have been upped by 20 per cent.
According to Melissa Kite, a writer for thisismoney.co.uk, Aviva is making £800 yearly off her on an alleged accident she was accused of causing. Aviva, formerly called Norwich Union, was the insurance provider for Ms. Kite, but it went against her in this case.
According to Melissa, as quoted by thisismoney.co.uk, “Aviva is not the insurance company of the party making the injury claim against me. It is my insurer. It’s meant to be on my side. But since the alleged accident last November, I have had to beg, cajole and implore Aviva to do more to fight those bringing the claim.”
Although Melissa’s case proved that she couldn’t possibly have been the at-fault party for the accident, her car insurance premium skyrocketed from a modest £372 to a shocking £1,136. Along with that, her long-standing no-claims discount has been deducted by two years. Furthermore, she has been adjudged as a high risk driver, with other insurers quoting her amounts as high as £2,000 and beyond.
“It was because of this absurd situation that when my ‘crash’ happened, I went to enormous trouble to gather as much evidence as I could in the belief that my insurers would be delighter I had taken such initiative,” Melissa bemoaned.
The actual situation was this: Melissa had been dragging her car at a speed under 5mph on a South London road’s traffic jam. The car in front of her started moving forward, then stopped all of a sudden. Melissa slammed on her brakes and her Peugeot 206 convertible stalled right against the car, a large Ford Galaxy. Neither vehicle had come into contact, according to Melissa. However, the driver from the vehicle in front jumped out and took down her details, even as his wife from the passenger’s seat got out and started complaining of backaches.
“I decided I had to be vigilant and insisted that they accompany me to a police station because I was disputing the incident. I later took photos of both cars on my mobile phone,” Melissa explained.
That’s when things started going wrong. The police sergeant did not come out to inspect the vehicles but gave standard accident forms to both parties. Melissa didn’t fill hers as there wasn’t even one question that allowed her to explain that there had been no accident.
A community support officer did agree to be witness to the fact that there had been no accident, but Melissa’s insurance company, Aviva, did not seem impressed by it. Aviva’s staff told her that her gathered evidence did not disprove that there might have been high-velocity impact causing injury.
At one point, Melissa was suspected of having fled the scene and threatened with prosecution, being let off only when she gave in writing that she had provided all her insurance details to the couple.
Long story short, Aviva bumped up Melissa’s premium by £800 for the incident, even though it was clear she was not at fault. So now, from the cheap car insurance premiums she was enjoying just a few months ago, she is not having to pay exorbitant rates and might have to continue to do so even if she changes insurers.
