Mishandling of Vehicle Damage Claim

On the 4 December 2024, I was involved in an accident. I registered my claim timeously with Discovery Insure and provided all the supporting docs that they required. A day later an assessor was sent to my house as I was doubtful that I could drive my car to the Panel Beater whom Discovery had appointed (this was a different panel beater to which was agreed initially on the phone, I had requested one closer to my house which the first claims handler told me was on the Discovery service provider list, only to be told by the next claims handler that they were not). I had to insist on the assessor coming to my house as the claims handler wanted me to drive my accident damaged vehicle to the Panel Beater for the damage assessment.

The car was assessed to be undrivable (possibly a write off) and the car was picked up on 08 December 2024, by a towing company on behalf of the appointed panel beater for further assessment.

I was contacted by the panel beater (later on Discovery Insure) on 11 December 2024, to in form me that the car had been re-assessed and that the car would not be a write off (with damages damages amounting R55000) and that due to the time of year I could only expect to have my car back latest in the third week of 2025, which I fully understood given the circumstances.

On 07 January 2025, when the panel beater re-opened for the year, I told them about a problem I had experienced with the brakes on the car after the accident and asked whether or not it had been picked up in the damage assessment, they said that they would ask the mechanics to have a look when the parts for my car were received and they were stripping the car to conduct the repairs.

On 10 January 2025, I received an email from Discovery insure to inform me that the car was being stripped to assess the unforeseen damages. The panel beater informed me on the same day via WhatsApp that the parts for my car had not been received yet and that they would only look at the problem with the brakes once the parts were received.

On 13 January 2025, I was told by the panel beaters (again via WhatsApp) that the parts had still not arrived, but that the car had indeed been stripped to be ready for when the parts arrived.

On 16 January 2025, I was informed by the panel beater that the parts for the car had been received and that the car was currently in the panel shop for repairs.

On 27 January 2025, I reached out to the panel beater via WhatsApp (as I had not heard anything from them since the 16th and nothing from Discovery insure since the 10th) to enquire as to the status of my car, the panel beater came back to me +- 2 hours later to tell me that they had submitted the additional damages to Discovery and that they had rejected the additional claim and had asked them the resubmit with better pricing, which I was told they had done.

I called Discovery on 29 January 2025, to enquire as to why the additional damages had been rejected. The person I spoke to put me on hold so that they could contact the panel beaters themselves to find out what was going on, only then to be connected via a conference call to the panel beater for them to explain to me what was happening. At this time I was informed that the additional damages had in fact pushed the claim amount above the write off threshold and that Discovery wanted better prices on the parts so that they could avoid writing the car off and that now the panel beaters were still waiting for the new prices from the car manufacturer. I requested that a courtesy car be provided to me in the mean time to which the panel beater's administrator said she would speak to her manager and get back to me the same day, by 1400 that afternoon I had still heard nothing and enquired with them as to the progress of my request. They got back to me 2 hours later to say that they were now awaiting feedback from Discovery.

I called discovery the very next day (30 January 2025)to ask what was the delay, to be told that it looked like the car would indeed be written off and that they were awaiting a report from their independent assessors to confirm that the car would be written off.

On 31 January 2024 (a Friday), I received an email from Discovery to inform me that the car had been confirmed a write off and that they were awaiting the final report from the assessors before the claim would be handed over to the Total Loss department.

In the morning on 3 February 2025 (a Monday) I received another email from discovery to inform me that they were still awaiting the report as mentioned above. I called discovery again later that day to enquire as to the progress, the person I spoke with told me that he was part of the Total Loss department and that the report was sitting on his managers desk. He said I should expect a call later the same day or the following day. That day came and went (Tuesday 4 February 2025) and I heard nothing.

In the morning On Wednesday 5 February 2025, I called Discovery once again to enquire as to the progress, I was told that the report was sitting on the managers desk and that it would be escalated and I would be cc'd in on the escalation email. By 15h00 that day I still had not received an email, so I called Discovery again and this time asked to speak to a manager, I was put on hold for +- 10minutes only to be told that the manager was currently on another call and that she would call me back once she was done. I received a call from the manager at 16h43, I explained what I had experienced and she apologized to me profusely for how I had been treated and said that she would personally follow up and cc me in on the correspondence. In the email that she sent to me with the claim administrator in cc, she told me that they had not in fact received the report which I had been told had been sitting on the managers desk since Monday 03 February 2025.

At 08h05 on Thursday 06 February I received an email from the claims administrator to inform me that the report had been received and that I should expect a call from the Total Loss department shortly. At 11h05 (time of writing this review) I am still awaiting the call.

I want to point out as well that once your claim is confirmed and assigned to a claims administrator you receive an email from Discovery to confirm and they provide you with direct contact details for the claims administrator, but if you try and call them however no one answers and the call is dropped every time. I was assigned three different claims administrators for this claim as the first two were "unavailable" after the new year.

P.s. This is not the first time I have had this experience with discovery insure, my previous 2 building claim were handled in a very similar fashion, with the last one resulting in me having to speak to a manager to sort it out and in that case the manager paid me back my excess due to the poor service I had been provided. All of the correspondence with discovery is recorded and they call see the timeline of events.