Post by alf on Nov 3, 2023 9:48:41 GMT
As I mentioned elsewhere one of my best friends was T-boned while driving his Polestar in the summer. The old lady that did it, failed to stop at a give-way, so early on it was established it was her fault.
The first chaos was about where to repair - as a new car, my friend wanted the Volvo dealership to do it, the insurance company said no but weeks later sheepishly called him to say they were indeed taking it there as none of their approved repair centres could handle it.
The next issue has been parts. This was >4 months ago and its now repaired minus one wiring loom and a dashboard. Those parts have no delivery dates on them. This is becoming a recurring theme - now is not a good time to buy or repair a car with one of the many parts that have become as available as rockinghorse poo, as Alex has mentioned re: his new Octavia. There are horror stories of Giulia QF's on the owner's groups I follow waiting months for wiring looms and other parts, but this seems an issue across the board. I saw a story that JLR alone have something like 5,000 cars in a long term wait for parts for repair. Some it is the war in Ukraine, some the chip shortage following Fukushima, some COVID, and I'm guessing a lot is related to the explosion of EV development and also economics - companies trying to do more "just in time" delivery not stock expensive parts. Whatever it is, its a massive issue for big mechanical and accident related repairs.
These delays have all sorts of costs associated with them, and one of course is loan cars. The second my friend's insurer was sure it was not their party's fault, they involved an accident management company that gave him the Panamera Hybrid I forcibly borrowed when he was here. He questioned it, he didn't especially want or like it (he was entirely charging at his employer's site for free before) but they insisted it was like for like. After some months of this, at god knows what costs to the other insurer, they offered him I think £7k to buy a car that he could them keep afterwards! His insurer thought this was some sort of trap to prove the Panamera had never been needed, but they relented and now he has one of the original supercharged Mini Cooper S (he was always a hot mini fan when we were growing up).
All in all, when you consider an aging population that doesn't seem universally interested in worrying about health/eyesight before driving, tonnes more people on our roads from places like Eastern Europe where they drive like lunatics, huge numbers of uninsured/unlicensed drivers on the road, and young people as ever doing thier bit to bend metal in their first few years driving, and our national obsession with budget tyres and fiddling with phones while driving, there is no lack of accidents. Medical costs are spiralling and now the repairs can take months longer than before to sort out. Add insurance fraud and "crash for cash" to that and I'm not holding my breath about insurance prices dropping any time soon, indeed I work with some insurance companies and know they are mostly losing big money on car insurance.
The parts thing is perhaps the most suprising - we live in such an advanced age now, its hard to imagine basic parts (not advanced semiconductors) being so hard to manufactuer elsehwere!!
The first chaos was about where to repair - as a new car, my friend wanted the Volvo dealership to do it, the insurance company said no but weeks later sheepishly called him to say they were indeed taking it there as none of their approved repair centres could handle it.
The next issue has been parts. This was >4 months ago and its now repaired minus one wiring loom and a dashboard. Those parts have no delivery dates on them. This is becoming a recurring theme - now is not a good time to buy or repair a car with one of the many parts that have become as available as rockinghorse poo, as Alex has mentioned re: his new Octavia. There are horror stories of Giulia QF's on the owner's groups I follow waiting months for wiring looms and other parts, but this seems an issue across the board. I saw a story that JLR alone have something like 5,000 cars in a long term wait for parts for repair. Some it is the war in Ukraine, some the chip shortage following Fukushima, some COVID, and I'm guessing a lot is related to the explosion of EV development and also economics - companies trying to do more "just in time" delivery not stock expensive parts. Whatever it is, its a massive issue for big mechanical and accident related repairs.
These delays have all sorts of costs associated with them, and one of course is loan cars. The second my friend's insurer was sure it was not their party's fault, they involved an accident management company that gave him the Panamera Hybrid I forcibly borrowed when he was here. He questioned it, he didn't especially want or like it (he was entirely charging at his employer's site for free before) but they insisted it was like for like. After some months of this, at god knows what costs to the other insurer, they offered him I think £7k to buy a car that he could them keep afterwards! His insurer thought this was some sort of trap to prove the Panamera had never been needed, but they relented and now he has one of the original supercharged Mini Cooper S (he was always a hot mini fan when we were growing up).
All in all, when you consider an aging population that doesn't seem universally interested in worrying about health/eyesight before driving, tonnes more people on our roads from places like Eastern Europe where they drive like lunatics, huge numbers of uninsured/unlicensed drivers on the road, and young people as ever doing thier bit to bend metal in their first few years driving, and our national obsession with budget tyres and fiddling with phones while driving, there is no lack of accidents. Medical costs are spiralling and now the repairs can take months longer than before to sort out. Add insurance fraud and "crash for cash" to that and I'm not holding my breath about insurance prices dropping any time soon, indeed I work with some insurance companies and know they are mostly losing big money on car insurance.
The parts thing is perhaps the most suprising - we live in such an advanced age now, its hard to imagine basic parts (not advanced semiconductors) being so hard to manufactuer elsehwere!!
