KingPrice - Not feeling the 'King' experience so far.

After a 3rd party drove into my car on 9 January 2021, KingPrice (KP) advised me on 11 January 2021 (16 days ago) to follow a no-claim claims procedure (?) with them to get my car repaired and the costs of the damage claimed back from the 3rd party through KPs legal department, as the 3rd party, who is not a SA citizen, doesn't have insurance in SA, but offered to pay for all the damages in person.

It has now been more than a week since the damage assessment report was handed in at KP by their appointed motor repairs company, and still no word on when my car will be able to go in for repairs or what the status is of the claims process. All I've been getting are automated emails to say that it was being dealt with as a priority, but no reason why no progress was being made.

All my attempts thus far to try and get clarity on why there is such delay in progress, have ended in failure to get a meaningful response from KP. I've made several calls to their call center but mostly had to give up after 5 or 10 minutes of holding for someone to take my call. I've sent several emails to their claims department over the last few days to try and get hold of them and also logged call requests on the phone call prompts and on their app. No response.

Then finally this morning I was able to get through to someone who was able to leave the person handling my claim a message to call me back. I was also told to try and get hold of the 3rd party to request him to take KPs call when they call him, as they've been struggling to get hold of him.

I got hold of the 3rd party and was told that he was wondering why no one's called him yet from KP... He offered to call them directly if I could provide him with a direct number to the person handling the claim.

After a couple of hours, I received a callback from KP.

The explanation I got was that they couldn't get hold of the 3rd party because he has an overseas phone number and that the accident report was still in transit between two police stations. So everything was just stuck in limbo without any foreseeable way forward. I then suggested giving KP the 3rd party's email address to try and get hold of him, as there is apparently no direct line to the person handling my claim, which is now where we are in the process.

At the moment I'm not sure when or if this will be resolved successfully, or if it will only be resolved if I come up with further solutions to overcome the hold-ups to get this sorted.

I am disappointed that leaving KP to deal with this is causing me even more anguish and stress after the accident when I trusted in their quality service I've been paying for all these years. I am disappointed in their lack of communication and effort to problem-solve solutions to get this claim resolved. Good client service does not end with smart self-help call center prompt systems or automated emails to leave you hanging. It requires real human effort and interaction.

I'm by no means saying this is the norm at KP, but this time, for me - it's been a letdown so far. I would love to be able to up the score on this review should the remaining process have a more positive outcome.