Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Delay in handling a theft claim

Dear Mr Tan,
My car was stolen in May 08 at HDB carpark (open space). Currently under police investigation. My car was insured under X.

On the day of discover my car was missing, I had called up X's hotline and seeked their advise on the reporting procedures. I went to the branch and submitted my police report and given details to the counter staff. I had also requested the staff to get the officer-in-charge of my claims to call me in briefing me the process of claims.

After 6 days I filled the report, I have not receive any phone call from claim dept. I rang up the claim dept and shock to me that there was "NO RECORDS" of my filling as was told by the staff who receive my call. I was very frustrated and demand them to check it out.

One day later, the customer support staff advised me to re-submit my police report to her as "the investigation of the loss of my documents was still in progress".

After emailed my document to the claim dept and I had again requested the officer in charge to brief me on the claim process. After two days of my email, again I recieve NIL call. I called up again and was told that "the routing of document may need 3-4 working days".

I started to show my anger and demanded the staff to check on my submission immediately. After a day, I only receive a call from customer support officer with brief message on " waiting for 3 months after police close the case and also the COE/OMV rebates from LTA have to surrender to X". The claim officer in charge couldn;t even bother to call me directly and just passed the message via another person.

I'm very disappointed on the responsibility and response of X in this entire process as they just take their own sweet time in handling my case,

In view of the above situation, I have lost my confidence in X in giving me a "fair estimation of my car market value" of my stolen car. As the claim will be effected after 3 months, I have no ideals on how to prepare myself in avoiding an "unfair" compensation to my loss.

Hope Mr Tan could enlighten me with advise and guide me on this claim. Hope to hear from you soon.

REPLY
You can write to ask X to give you a FAQ to explain how the market value of the vehicle is determined. If you find that the claim has not been handled promptly and fairly, you can lodge a complaint with the service quality manager.

If this is not settled satisfactorily, you can file a complaint with FiDREC.
http://www.fidrec.com.sg/website/faq.html