One has to love insurers and their call centres.
Some bright spark hit my A2 from behind at a junction over the weekend. All looks fine from the outside, bar a slightly misaligned tailgate. Underneath the bumper things look rather grimmer.
I called the insurer on Saturday morning. After the usual "Prove you're not Osama Bin Laden's third cousin" identity interrogation, the operator told me they'd get their "approved" bodyshop to come and look at the car.
"Splendid," I said, "And are they certified to work on cars with aluminium construction?"
Insert a suitable noise for a call center operator trying to answer a question that's not on the script or in the knowledgebase. Evasion, avoidance, claims that she couldn't offer advice, blah, blah, corporate scripted blah.
She had no idea, but said I could get another bodyshop to quote - if I was prepared to drive there, get an estimate, have their engineer question the estimate and dance around a pentacle drawn in goats' blood whilst chanting "shareholder value must be increased".
I realised this had 'catch-the-customer-in-the-middle disaster waiting to happen' written all over it, and agreed reluctantly, to their bodyshop.
The assessor came out to see me today.
"Can't work on ally-bodied cars." He said. I said that I knew, but apparently (according to Ms Call Centre) his company would take the responsibility for the job and find a qualified aluminium bodyshop and look after everything.
Apparently not. What a huge surprise (where's the 'dripping with sarcasm' emoticon when you need it?)
So now I have to wait for the towering intellectuals at the insurance company's claims department to work out what to do next.
Sooooo... Anyone know a bodyshop they'd trust with their A2's aluminium body near West Oxfordshire?
Thanks!
Some bright spark hit my A2 from behind at a junction over the weekend. All looks fine from the outside, bar a slightly misaligned tailgate. Underneath the bumper things look rather grimmer.
I called the insurer on Saturday morning. After the usual "Prove you're not Osama Bin Laden's third cousin" identity interrogation, the operator told me they'd get their "approved" bodyshop to come and look at the car.
"Splendid," I said, "And are they certified to work on cars with aluminium construction?"
Insert a suitable noise for a call center operator trying to answer a question that's not on the script or in the knowledgebase. Evasion, avoidance, claims that she couldn't offer advice, blah, blah, corporate scripted blah.
She had no idea, but said I could get another bodyshop to quote - if I was prepared to drive there, get an estimate, have their engineer question the estimate and dance around a pentacle drawn in goats' blood whilst chanting "shareholder value must be increased".
I realised this had 'catch-the-customer-in-the-middle disaster waiting to happen' written all over it, and agreed reluctantly, to their bodyshop.
The assessor came out to see me today.
"Can't work on ally-bodied cars." He said. I said that I knew, but apparently (according to Ms Call Centre) his company would take the responsibility for the job and find a qualified aluminium bodyshop and look after everything.
Apparently not. What a huge surprise (where's the 'dripping with sarcasm' emoticon when you need it?)
So now I have to wait for the towering intellectuals at the insurance company's claims department to work out what to do next.
Sooooo... Anyone know a bodyshop they'd trust with their A2's aluminium body near West Oxfordshire?
Thanks!