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cheryl hannigan

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Review of the 1st Central, Car insurance:

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A living nightmare!

Our car was involved in an accident on 1st October 2022, we are now on 6th Jan 2023. After 6 weeks of continuous calling we were told they couldn’t find a garage in our local network. So we got a private quote to try and move things along. Quote came out at just shy of £8500, we submitted this plus photos of the damage and was told that the quote was too high and WE needed to speak with our repairer to reduce costs by £1k! After a few more weeks of backwards and forwards 1st Central agreed that it wasn’t my place to “haggle” the repair costs and it was being sent to their “independent engineers” and that this would take 7 days…. 2 weeks later I’m back on the phone to find out what is going on to be told they hadn’t submitted it yet! I wrote a formal complaint saying if not resolved I would refer the case to the financial ombudsman, I got a generic letter back saying it will take 8 weeks to investigate! 2 days ago I called them again after being told our hire car contract had ended and we needed to go over to our local car hire branch and sort this out. They of course needed updates which I couldn’t give as wasn’t getting anything from the insurance company. Anyway 2 days ago I’m on the phone and I’m told it’s still with the independent engineers, I was furious! Now over three months since the accident and 5 weeks of that the case was allegedly with the engineer! They put me through to the engineers to discuss and the engineers agreed to call me back the following day! I have to say thank god the engineers are a separate company as they kept their promise and called me back the following day to say they agreed with the quote we submitted, it was a fair quote but felt that there was hidden damage to the vehicle which would not be seen until work is commenced and therefore costs would increase and felt the car is beyond economical repair! They have now referred back to first central to agree settlement figure but thankfully the engineer told us what our car is worth so we will not be accepting an offer lower than that! And I will probably be on the phone even more now trying to get them to part with the payment. Really poor customer service, they make promises that they can’t keep and have absolutely no contact with you unless you hound them. I have spent hours on the phone being passed from pillar to post as it’s rare you will get through to someone who knows what they are doing! I was with them for two years prior to this with no issues, but then I didn’t need anything until someone went into the back of us! So if you want an insurer that will have your interests at heart and deliver great insurance then please do not use first central they really aren’t worth the money (I have two policies with them and both will not be renewed!) Reviewed on: 6th January 2023

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