Insurance: left hand drive vehicles.

[Brian Kirby]

Warning; this will be of little interest to those with right hand drive vehicles, hence the title. 'Though you are of course welcome to read it if you wish! :-D

 

When renewing the insurance on our van with Comfort (by 'phone), last November, I was asked whether it was left hand drive. When I confirmed that it was my informant said that had not been recorded. I expressed surprise, saying I was sure this had been stated at the time the proposal was completed (also by 'phone) in 2017. I was then told this was a "material fact" and that the records had now been corrected.

 

Having put down the 'phone, I checked all the renewals, schedules, and statements of fact, and sure enough, there was no mention of the van being left hand drive. When the new renewal documents arrived I again checked for mention of left hand drive and there was still none. So, I contacted Comfort again to query the omission, and was informed that there was no facility to record that fact as it had no bearing on the premium. Apparently the underwriter, AVIVA, is only interested in documenting matters that affect the premium, and their schedules and statements of fact have no fields in which such information could be indicated. I was assured that the information was held in Comfort's records, and that recordings of the proposal/renewal conversations would provide the evidence, should this be needed.

 

Having received an e-mail from Comfort on Thursday about new documents being available to view/download online, I again looked and found the documents remained "silent" on LHD.

 

So, rather than 'phone, this time I posed the query by e-mail, saying: "......I should be grateful if you would please a) confirm that your records now show that the above vehicle is left hand drive, and b) also give consideration to recording this in future (on either proposals or schedules) as a matter of course.

Bearing in mind the contractual nature of insurance, it is disconcerting that the insured party could be left unaware of any material fact held in your records, and so be denied the ability to check their accuracy"

 

Their reply stated "........I can confirm that we do have your vehicle listed as a left hand drive. All of our calls are recorded so any discussion you had with a member of staff would be on record.

Unfortunately, the documents for our Aviva motorhome policies do not state whether the vehicle is a left or right hand drive as this has no impact on the premium."

 

So I persisted some more :-) saying "...Your present procedure leaves me (and your other clients), in a position where we cannot tell whether this, or any other undocumented information you may hold, is incorrect.

Surely it must be possible to add to the vehicle description in the Schedule, under “Make and Model” either “LHD Fiat Knaus Box Star 600 Street” or “Fiat Knaus Box Star 600 Street (LHD)”, or to similarly incorporate the information into the “Statement of Fact”?

 

One hour later the very nice lady I had been e-mailing responded with a further link to the on-line documents store which, when opened, revealed that in both the Statement of Fact, and the Schedule, the vehicle descriptions now reads "Fiat Knaus Box Star Street 600 LHD".

 

This may seem nit-picking, but the omission of a "material fact" is a breach of contract. In most circumstances it would probably not be relevant to whether a claim might be met, but I can envisage some circumstances where it might. Otherwise, why would it be a "material fact" for the insurance contract?

 

As none of the proposals or renewals since we got our first van in 2005 have mentioned that the vans were left hand drive (they all were), I had assumed the information was not contractually material. Only during that one conversation, after 15 years and four vans, did I learn that it was, and that in the absence of access to the recorded proposal/renewal conversations, I could not prove that this had ben declared. Now, simply by adding LHD to the vehicle description, I can - at least to my own satisfaction.

 

So, I think it may be wise to verify whether your insurer regards your van being left hand drive is a material fact, and is aware, and has recorded, that it is.

 

Beyond that, at the time the premium is accepted, Comfort (so I assume all other insurers) send both a Schedule, and a Statement of Fact, that one is invited to check for accuracy, and notify them of any errors or omissions. If a fact is material it should, IMO, be there to be seen by both parties to the contract. A recording of a telephone conversation that may, or may not, be available when needed, is not, IMO, a contractually satisfactory substitute for written evidence. Food for thought?

 

[StuartO]

Our last two MHs have been LHD and we've had the last one since new in 2006. I was pretty confident that I had told the insurer about the LHD but I cannot now remember whether we were with our current insurer from 2006 and I cannot imagine they would have a recording from so long ago anyway. The renewal has just cropped up so I will obviously ask. Thanks for the hint Brian.

[Brian Kirby]

You're welcome Stuart. It's what the forum is for. :-)

[slowdriver]

Thanks for the heads up Brian. I have checked and my Safeguard Motorhome Insurance Statement of Fact document shows:

 

"Left or right hand drive: Left"

 

So I think I am in the clear.

 

 

[Derek Uzzell]

My last two motorhomes have been left-hand drive and both have been insured through Comfort insurance.

 

I’m certain that I informed Comfort Insurance that both vehicles were LHD and being told that this did not affect the insurance premium. No mention was made of any need to declare whether the vehicle was LHD or RHD when seeking insurance and my current motorhome is described on the Statement of Fact simply as "Fiat Rapido 640”. There’s plenty of room in the Statement of Fact’s description-field to put “Fiat Rapido 640F LHD” if wished, but if AViVA doesn’t care which side the steering-wheel is on I don’t really see why the broker should.

 

On a different subject, if requested Comfort Insurance will now issue a ‘Green Card’ (via email) free of charge and this will cover the complete term of the motorhome insurance policy.

 

My car is also insured via Comfort Insurance, but - although a Green Card will be provided (via email) for the car free of charge - the card will only be issued on a ‘per trip’ basis. So if I were to be abroad in the car for a fortnight in each of (say) May, July, September and November 2021, I would need to request a Green Card for the relevant date-period in each of those months (ie, four Green Cards would be needed).

[Brian Kirby]

Derek Uzzell - 2021-01-30 7:21 AM

My last two motorhomes have been left-hand drive and both have been insured through Comfort insurance.

I’m certain that I informed Comfort Insurance that both vehicles were LHD and being told that this did not affect the insurance premium. No mention was made of any need to declare whether the vehicle was LHD or RHD when seeking insurance and my current motorhome is described on the Statement of Fact simply as "Fiat Rapido 640”. There’s plenty of room in the Statement of Fact’s description-field to put “Fiat Rapido 640F LHD” if wished, but if AViVA doesn’t care which side the steering-wheel is on I don’t really see why the broker should...............................

Except, I was specifically advised that the vehicle being left hand drive was a "material fact". In contract speak, that means it is information that must be declared when completing a proposal, as it is part of the basis for the contract.

 

My concern is that this information is never made visible to the insured, only being held on an "invisible" record held by Comfort and - providing it has survived - on the recording made at at the time the proposal was completed. One therefore has no way of knowing that it exists, and so whether it is right or wrong. I had always thought that the "Statement of Fact" was intended to be the record of all the material facts. Otherwise, it becomes a "Statement of some of the Facts" - and you can guess what the others are! :-)

 

AVIVA may not charge a higher premium for left hand drive vehicles, but that is their commercial prerogative. If the position of the driver were held to be a contributory factor in some accident, I imagine AVIVA might look for evidence that they had insured the vehicle with this in mind, and so had accepted the business on a fully informed basis. At that point, an avoidable argument over who had told who what, and when, and who had to prove it, would not be helpful. One is then into the world of "an absence of evidence not being evidence of absence". So, in the interests of having tangible evidence that a full declaration had been made, it seemed preferable to put the information where everyone could see it.

 

If my informant was wrong, then all that has resulted is that I have three unnecessary letters in the van description. If she was right, those three letters allow me to prove, if necessary, that Comfort, as agent for AVIVA, had the information as a basis for contract, and the fight is then between Comfort (or more probably their PI insurer :-)) and AVIVA.

 

I'm not implying bad faith on Comfort's part, simply that the basis for contract should be equally clear to both contracting parties. It is a (probably historic, born of custom and practise) loose end, and contracts should not have loose ends. When they do, someone, somewhere, at some time, is liable to lose.

[StuartO]

Insurance is a matter of contract law so I have always assumed that if there is a dispute (i.e.refusal of a claim by the insurer) a court would decide - based mainly on the wording of the policy, which is the contract. These days however, not least because the example of insurers behaviour during the COVID outbreak, insurers have shown themselves to be untrustworthy; no longer is it "My word is my bond" but rather they will "Nickle & Dime" their response to a claim, doing whatever they can to avoid paying out. Policy holders need to make sure they are covered by a reputable insurer and that the policy wording doesn't leave them at risk of claims being refused for manipulative reasons. Leaving loose ends which allow the insurer scope for refusing claims, like your MH being LHD,

 

My Nationwide travel insurance gives world wide cover, including for cruises, so when we found ourselves having to cancel a cruise in January 2020 and the cruise company refused any refund because we did so at the last minute (under their terms and conditions) so I looked at the travel insurance policy. I discovered to my surprise that there was cancellation cover if you had to cancel because of FCO advice against non-essential travel within 28 days of departure, which was exactly our situation. We were due to fly to New Zealand on February 6th to join a ship heading through the Far East and then back to UK and the cruise company were dragging their heels announcing their intentions, seemingly wanting to get as many people to fly out to New Zealand and Australia before they announced anything which might discourage them to do so. The FCO had by then cranked up it's advice and were advising aganist non-esential travel to Shanghai (one of our planned ports of call) and so techically speaking we seemed to be entitled to recover the full costs of cancelling.

 

So I rang the Nationwide insurers (a company called UK Insurance Ltd, part of Direct Line) and explained the situation. They listened only to the outline story and then announced that they would be refusing the claim for two reasons: 1) The FCO advice was only against non-essential travel, not all travel, 2) The FCO advice did not include to Shanghai, which was inculded in Mainland China and 3) Even if the claim could be met, they would only pay a "pro-rata" amount, reflecting the skipping of one port of call from the cruise plan. The cruise company were at this stage still dragging their heels and on paper were still planning to do the whole itinerary, including Shanghai. The policy wording was quite explicit about cancellation within 28 days being allowed if the FCO were advising against nonessential travel and the FCO advice had recently changed to include advice against non-essential travel to Shanghai and there was no mentionof "pro-rata" payment for cancelling a cruise because only one port was forbidden by the FCO. UK Insurance were clearly determined to avoid paying a caim of this sort (nearly £20,000) at any price, including falsely interppreting FCO advice and the policy wording - and even inventing extra provisions to allow them to apply pro-rata deductions.

 

Come the day of departure we had decided not to go (because the virus outbreak was clearly going to spread across the Far East etc) and because the cruise company would not accept our right to cancel (because they were dragging their heels) we had to decide for ourselves not to fly to New Zealand. It looked like we were going to have to sacrifice the whole cost but I could see that the outbreak was going to get very big indeed and we decided we would rather stay in UK and stay alive. I had contacted the CEO of the cruise line, told him I was a retired doctor and suggested very strongly that they should stop dragging their heels and divert away fron the Far East all together, get some expert medical advice (I even gave them a name of a suitable world class expert) so I put down a firm notification of sensible advice in good time. It was peprhaps for that reason that a couple of weeks llater, out of the blue, our travel agant rang to say that P&O were now going to give me a full refund,including the air fares.

 

It also became clear soon after this that Nationwide had leaned on UK Insurance to behave responsibly in meeting claims because of COVID because there was no reason in the policy not to. There were a few non-P&O cancellation costs (hotel and car hire, because we had planned a week IN NZ before joining the ship) and so I contacted UK Insurance again. While UK insurance were now willing to consider the claim they were still talking about applying a pro-rata deduction (because we were only going to have to miss one port of call) and their whole approach was dispicably meanminded and nit picking in every possible way. To cut a long story short their own Customer Complaints peope, thought they we being awful and they made us compensation payments which more than covered the amounts their Claims department were still determined to refuse. Incidentally my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service got nowhere and they seemed to take the line that "industry standard practice" (in such things as applying pro-rata deductions) overrode what the policy document actually said.

 

So even a big mutal insurer like Nationwide cannot really be trusted, in their case because they outsource to a cowboy outfit like UK Insuranace Ltd and fail to supervise them adequately. I have learned that policy holders must read the policy carefully, especially for exclusions and other escape clauses and they must never under-declare anything to do with risk at proposal time because you might just as well be throwing your premium payment down the toilet. An insurance contract is regarded by the courts as a "contract of ultimate trust" which means that if you fail to declare anything which the insurer regards as relevant to assessing the risk, whether they have asked you the relevant question or not, the cover in invalidated and you are deemed to have made a present to the insuruer of your ppremium.

 

The ray of sunshine in the COVID insurance story is of course that commercial property insurers have been ordered by the Supreme Court to pay up under the loss of business cover of their policies, which even the more reputable insurers has been trying to evade because a pandemc was not covered, even if the policy didn't say so. Well done the Supreme Court.

 

Time to ring my MH insurer, to check that they know mine is LHD!

[breakaleg]

We had a full refund from P&O cruises we were offered a future cruise voucher which I rejected, we had to wait until after the cruise date.

We were going from Southampton, we also had a full parking refund and a full refund from the insurance money (cost of the insurance) I guess we were lucky not to have any hassle.

Pete

[Brian Kirby]

But, could we please try to keep this string on the straight and narrow, as it was intended to tip-off owners of LHD vans to check whether, and if so where, the fact that their van is LHD, is recorded on their insurance documents, rather than digressing into insurance in general? Thank you all.

[StuartO]

If general insurance is becoming difficult and we motorhomers need at least travel insurance as well as road traffic cover, isn't a bit of a diversion a useful way ofkeeping interest in the thread going? Otherwise your OP has said it all, hasn't it?

[Derek Uzzell]

StuartO - 2021-01-30 1:02 PM

 

...isn't a bit of a diversion a useful way ofkeeping interest in the thread going?...

No - this is not the Chatterbox forum - please stay on topic.

[StuartO]

OK, that’s me told! 8-)

[Derek Uzzell]

As a regular poster on Chatterbox threads (38 threads in the past month) I knew you’d enjoy a lick of sadism. ;-)

[StuartO]

If I’m developing into a regular Chatterbox contributor that’s very worrying. Is there any therapy!

[Derek Uzzell]

There’s the treatment currently being tried with Birdbrain/Antony1969 - but It’s doubtful this will be a permanent cure.

[StuartO]

That explains something. :-D

[onecal]

Thanks Brian, for the heads up on that .

[witzend]

onecal - 2021-01-30 5:46 PM

 

Thanks Brian, for the heads up on that .

Heads up on what ? :-D :-)

[davidmac]

Hi, wearing boxing gloves could be a cure for chatterbox, it is reputed to be a cure for other similar habits

Regards David

[Keithl]

onecal - 2021-01-30 5:46 PM

 

Thanks Brian, for the heads up on that .

Brian or Derek (?) (?) (?)

[onecal]

Both

My apologies to Derek interesting info' not of course leaving out yourself on some other very interesting topics of the years Well done all

regards