Get it repaired not ruined

How asking your insurer to nominate a windscreen repairer could lead to a poor quality repair.

In the real world outside of the corporate spreadsheet, you can see a repair like this has been done badly because it looks almost the same as it did before the repair.  But in the whacky world of insurance just seeing that it’s bad with your own eyes is not enough… you must prove that it’s bad with statistics. Down the rabbit hole the reverse is also true.

Even if you can see it’s bad your insurer can prove a repair like this is good with statistics.

Only seeing that a windscreen chip looks the same as when you started isn’t good enough in the world of the insurance company. The customer has to successfully complain in order to get anything done (remembering that once the repair has been attempted once nothing short of a new screen will actually remedy the bad repair, was this the intended outcome all along ?).

 Most people think that they have had the windscreen chip repaired for free and attribute no monetary value to it, and so they are reluctant to complain when the repair is of poor quality.

That’s just not British is it?

Who cares if it’s rubbish, it was free anyway, right?

Of those customers who are able to get through directly to their insurer to make a complaint - who wants to spend hours in voice mail jail to a call centre, moaning to a person reading from a script? This is why recorded complaints are incredibly low and why complaining will not change anything. Wouldn’t it be better to get it right first time than end up like this?

Most people will complain straight back to the windscreen company who often set a low expectation of the outcome. You are often unable to speak directly to your insurer about glass claims because when you “press #2 for glass” you will be diverted directly to their nominated supplier who will most likely answer the phone in the name of the insurer. The windscreen company will offer to replace the screen (subject to the excess) which is the most profitable option for them.

 This complaint will never reach the statistics so it is effectively hidden and the windscreen company has secured the first bite of the cherry by offering to do the repair. This will satisfy the insurer as the screen co. are able to say that they “tried” to repair it, but that the policyholder insisted that the windscreen was replaced.

Incredible fact: The insurance company manager who actually paid a windscreen company for the low-quality repair that is shown here commented that their supplier, “had done his company a favour,” on the basis that it had saved the insurer the cost of a replacement windscreen. He further commented that this obviously sub-standard repair must be of satisfactory quality because the customer had not “complained.” This is what consumers are up against.

When you paid your insurance premium, a part of that payment is allocated to fund a possible glass claim. Your insurer knows statistically what percentage of policyholders are likely to make a claim and it also knows historically how much each claim will cost on average. If you are making a genuine claim (not coerced into getting your chip done in a car park) then you should not feel guilty because you are saving your insurer money and you have already paid for the service in advance because your insurer has budgeted for it.

The statistics

As policyholders are counted in their hundreds of thousands, insurers have to adopt a set of rules to cover this vast amount of clients. In most cases you are little more than a number to your insurer, which is why it is difficult to talk to a knowledgeable person with the authority to resolve your problem. As long as most people get their problem resolved (or can’t be bothered to complain) then the system is deemed a success. As you are only one in 100,000 policyholders, if you have a bad experience and complain then that is 0.001% complaint ratio!

Most insurers monitor the performance of their key suppliers and would take action if the complaints got to an unacceptable level. However, due to the vast numbers involved, the number of people that would have to complain to make just 1% failure rate would be 1000 people! Also bear in mind that roughly 1 in 14 people claim on their policy for glass and of that figure 50% are for glass other than the windscreen. This means 3.6% of people that are insured need front windscreen work. We also know that, at best, only 20% of front windscreen work is for repairs rather than replacement. So to work it out…

20 %  of 100,000 policyholders x 3.6 %  =  720 people who are likely to get their screens repaired (not replaced)

Here’s the mind boggling bit…

If every one of these people successfully complained directly to the insurer then the complaints would still only be just 0.72% of the total policyholders or only 10 % of the total glass claimants!

Even if half the windscreen chip repair jobs were bad and half of those bad jobs were successfully complained about (directly to the insurer and not to the windscreen company), that would only be a 2.5% failure rate for that supplier!

Every repair pictured in this article has been carried out by a windscreen replacement company and only one customer successfully complained.

 Now you can see why a windscreen repair supplier can consistently produce poor physical results and still be recommended to an unwitting policyholder. Don’t let this happen to you. You can choose which company that you would like to repair your windscreen, you may have to pay first, but it will be cheaper in the long run…