Car Insurance...What a *******!!!

<p>I was in an accident on 29 January 2017. A taxi tried to overtake me on the right hand side while I was turning right into a road, s****ping the side of my car in the process. Budget Insurance was very professional; a tow truck was on the scene in no time, taking down all of my details and having the car towed away. I thought it would be a pleasant process, to my dismay it has been nothing but. It is now 5 months later and I am still fighting to get my excess back. The day of the accident I spoke to the taxi driver’s manager, she told me that she is willing to cover the insurance excess. The next day I contacted my insurance to open the claim. I told my insurance that the manager of the taxi driver was willing to cover the excess; they then told me that I should not get the manager to pay the excess as I will then be liable for the damages, as the third party needs to cover the damages of the accident as well as my excess. They mentioned that they have a whole department devoted to recovering excess for their clients. Of course I didn't want to be liable for the damages I let the insurance deal with the third party. Once the car was fixed and I paid the excess I contacted the recoveries department to claim back my excess. The first issue I had with them was that they couldn't get hold of the taxi driver, or the manager which was strange because I gave them all of the relevant numbers and I was still able to contact these people. Which just tells me one of two things, they weren't actually trying to call these people or they weren’t trying more than once. I then had to contact the people myself and get them to liaise with the insurance. Eventually the manager was no longer willing to cover any of the damages and left it up to the taxi driver. Eventually got in touch with the taxi driver and arrangements was made for payments against the excess. I asked the insurance person dealing with my claim (person kept changing) to please keep me up to date with what was happening, but that never happened. I called a month or two after the arrangement for payment was set up, and the person I spoke to told me the guy has not yet made any payments. I asked so what is the next step he told me he will issue a letter of demand. Again I asked him will you please keep me up to date with what is happening, again it did not happen. I phoned a month after the letter of demand was supposedly sent out. I spoke to another lady Felene (the only budget insurance employee to phone me back with some feedback) in the call centre, she said there has been no payments made and the letter of demand has been sent out. I told her that must have been more than a month ago and she said yes they need to take the next step which was sending all the information to the attorneys. I asked her when will that happen and she told me she doesn't know it can take a week, it can take months. </p> <p> </p> <p>Now this is when I really started to boil because all the effort has been made from my side to get things sorted, it is not my job to follow up and do whatever is necessary to get hold of the people to recover the excess. No, it is the responsibility of BUDGET insurance Recoveries Department. They have a whole department dedicated to recovering excess but yet it is 5 months later and mine still hasn't been paid back to me. No one gets back to me; I am always the one making contact with them. I pay them on time every single month and this is the thanks I get. And they even have the nerve to push up your excess and monthly instalments after the accident but yet they haven't done anything to help you.</p> <p> </p> <p>I will definitely not recommend this insurance company to anyone. The service I received has been pathetic to say the least. </p> <p> </p>