AXA Car Insurance Bad Customer Service

Sent in by a visitor. AXA Car insurance has some of the worst customer service I have ever had the misfortune of having to deal with. None of the departments that deal with accident claims seem to know the right department to put me through to. It appears to be so unorganised that its been close to impossible to get the answer to what should be a very simple query. The funny thing is, I'm not even insured by AXA. It's the person who caused the accident who is insured by AXA. I'm the third-party.

AXA-Insurance-crash-test

But still, having to go through them in order to get the matter resolved has been met with stumbling blocks all the way. They have dragged their heels at almost every step. From taking a long time to make first contact after the crash (with me having to re-contact the person at fault in order for them to ask their car insurance company (AXA) why they haven't made contact with me), to paying me the settlement for my car being a total loss. Everything has been so slow.

But the worst and most shocking thing about dealing with AXA has been trying to establish what address to write on the online form that notifies the DVLA that the car has been written off. Or in my case, sold to the AXA Insurance company. Failure to inform the DVLA can result in a one thousand pound fine. I'm not sure what the timeframe is for notification but with AXA not replying to emails, and with it being near impossible to phone and get put through to the right department that knows the answer to this question, weeks were going by and I was no nearer to finding the answer.

car-accident-motorway-rolled-roof

Every phone number that I was given by AXA employees, who said to call them if there was anything I needed help with, all said the same thing. Either "This isn't the right department", and I'll have to transfer you (which still didn't help resolve the issue because the other department didn't know the answer either), or "We can't find you on the system", even though I gave them all the reference numbers I had been given by AXA. Some of their staff were also quite rude. Their telephone manner was generally abrupt.

To get the answer to this simple question (What address to use to inform the DVLA AXA had bought my total loss car), it took several weeks. Many ignored emails later, and phone calls which resulted in me being left on hold for over 1 hour each time and being so annoyed I eventually had to hang up. One day I thought to myself; Today I need the answer and I'm not getting off the phone with AXA until I have it. For the final call I had to be transferred to at least five different departments, spanning what appeared to be by the change of accents, the whole breadth of the UK, and spent another full hour on the phone.

After each representative claimed its was not their area of expertise and palming the problem off to another department (left on hold every time), the end result was the correct address. But wow, what a nightmare company to have to deal with. Overall this was a very shocking and disappointing experience, and I'm glad that I don't use AXA for my own car insurance.

The key realisation that I came away with after this experience, is that when it comes to car insurance companies, if you have trouble with your own company and feel like they are not providing a very good service, you can always change and go with someone else. But when its the car insurance of the other party, in my case the person responsible for the crash, and you have to go through them to resolve the matter, you are basically forced to have to deal with them no matter how terrible they turn out to be. If you want to share your experience of dealing with a car insurance company, good or bad. Let us know.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had a similar experience with axa. Had an accident, not at fault. No response for months. Then had physio treatment. More time past. Then when my physio had finished they took months to re establish contact. I had to contact them! It's like I was forgotten about.

Third Party Claimant said...

I am the writer of this review and subscribed to this post for any future updates / comments. I wanted to add, that after many months, and with the DVLA confirming I am no longer the owner of my old car (which was a write-off), AXA still haven't made contact with me in order to obtain the V5C certificate for the car. I still have the V5 for a car that was scrapped months ago.

Their level of laziness and total incompetence is absolutely shocking. And it appears me and the other commenter here are not the only ones who have experienced this. After taking a look at some of the reviews online (Trustpilot) I was surprised to see just how many unhappy customers there are. Some of which have experienced close to the same exact problems as me.

I shudder to think how long it could potentially take to resolve my personal injury claim. At this rate probably a year or two. I get the feeling I'll have to contact the financial ombudsman and let them deal with it. Hopefully it won't come to that, but after reading through all the negative reviews, sadly, I fear it is a distinct possibility. I can't believe companies like this can get away with treating customers in this manner and not have some kind of punishment in the form of a trading licence revoked or an enormous fine. Bad press isn't enough.

I will comment on this page with the final outcome once everything has been settled. Will it be quick, or will it be a long drawn out, dragging their heels process like it has been so far. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Third Party Claimant said...

I'm pleased to report that my personal injury claim has been settled. Thankfully, all the horror stories I read through on Trust Pilot didn't really come true for me. Fair enough, it was hard at the beginning, and AXA are still, overall, a bit of a nightmare to deal with. Their customer service department really needs to be sorted out.

But now that its over, and I've received my settlement, I have to say that the last part of the case was dealt with much quicker than I thought it would be.

I'm going to tell you exactly what I did, so that maybe others can follow the same course of action and get a faster resolution to their claim like I did.

Okay. Here's what I did. I emailed them a few times on two different email addresses that were part of the personal injury department. No reply what so ever. Emailed them again asking why I haven't received any response. Again, I got the silent treatment.

I read a bad / negative review where a woman took to Twitter to complain and ended up getting her matter resolved. So I thought that's what I should do. I wrote out a tweet complaining, adding @AXA and @axainsurance into the tweet. And within a few minutes I had an AXA representative replying back me on Twitter asking for my claim information via private twitter message.

The AXA employee said he would pass my information on to the appropriate department and someone would be in touch with 72 hours. Who said social media was dead! Unbelievable how fast things can potentially get done when going public!

I gave him all the details and within 30 minutes I received a phone call from an AXA personal injury claims representative. He took all the details and confirmed that they had my case files in their office and that someone would look at it. However, when I asked how long this would take because I'd already been waiting a few months, he said he wasn't sure because they were so busy. I said, Okay then, thanks for letting me know and the call was ended.

At this point I was just happy to know that they had my case details in their possession and it would be dealt with once they cleared a chunk of their backlog of claims. After all, some of the reviews I had been reading were absolutely shocking. So to get a positive reply was a bonus. One women had been waiting over two years for her claim to be resolved.

And another disgruntled reviewer said they made her an offer, she accepted, and then AXA retracted the offer and tried to offer her half the amount that she was originally offered by them. That sounds illegal to me. Did she seem to eager to accept and they thought they could offer her less and she would still accept. I don't know. Anyway, back to my claim.

Within around a week / 10 days of receiving this phone call, and with me expecting to have to wait a few months for any other correspondence due to the representatives "I don't know how long it will take" answer, I received a letter in the post that contained a settlement offer.

In my opinion the offer was fair. I know people always say, "don't accept the first offer", but it was a fair offer and I didn't want to have wait another few months or longer for them to make me another offer and for this case to still be ongoing, so I took the offer.

Within 1 day of me accepting the offer, filling out the acceptance form and giving them my bank details (not by post), my settlement was paid into my account in full. From reading the reviews and experiencing a very slow and annoying start and middle, I expected a much worse, drawn out conclusion to the end of this matter. But in the end I was left pleasantly surprised by how fast the later stage of the case was dealt with. Case is now over, and I'm happy to see the back of it.

Third Party Claimant said...

Had to send this message in two pieces because it was too long!

Here's the rest:

The one turning point for me seemed to be when I sent that Twitter message. Once I did that, it seemed to get the ball rolling and get my case to the front of the queue. So if you're having problems getting in contact with AXA car insurance, take to twitter.

Send a tweet saying you're unhappy, add in @AXA (worldwide I think) and @axainsurance (the UK) so they get to see the tweet, and you have a very good chance of getting your matter resolved, or at least having someone from AXA actually getting in touch with you rather than the other way round. Worked for me. Good luck. Case closed.

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