Claim: 2 weeks and still no payment amount & date of payment disclosed on insurance

I am a customer at Oakhurst for over 4 years and have never missed a premium payment. I am quite upset about the period of time my claim is taking to be paid out. My accident occurred on 28/08/2017 and I had phoned Oakhurst to notify them immediately. I was reassured that it would be sent to the claims department to process. However, my claim was not registered until I had phoned Oakhurst on 29/08/2017 to confirm. Then I waited the 6 days I was told to wait for my old claims handler to call me regarding the amount to be paid out and she did not. When I did call on 6/09/2017, I was told that she had left 5 days ago & the new handler will call me. I then called the new handler the same day. Only then did my claim begin moving through the process. It has been 2 weeks and I still have not even been informed of the amounts for retail value of my car, excesses, settlement and my payout; let alone actually be paid out. When I called n 8/09/2017 , I was also told that they are awaiting ABSA to send through the settlement amount which will take 2-3days! I know that ABSA sends the settlement amount within minutes to me! If someone from Oakhurst had called me to inform me of this, I could have asked ABSA to send it to you in minutes. I then got my bank to send them the settlement amount on 11/09/2017. I have my new finance and car dealership hounding me everyday.

I am going to go with another insurance company for my new car if this is how deprioritsed your customers are when they are in need. I may consider staying with Oakhurst if 1) my claim gets paid ASAP (& I need a specific date for this) and 2) the maximum of 10% excess on my claim is recovered by your Recoveries Department from the municipality. As I have noted and the police have verified, the cable is right on the roadside with no barrier nor markings so this was not my fault and I should not be penalised for this. It has already caused me to lose my car, have to pay 15% excess and have a really low retail value on the car from your side (in accordance with non-commital quotes received from various consultants at Oakhurst).

This experience has really made me lose faith in Oakhurst. Throughout this process it has been me having to phone Oakhurst continuously to goad the process along or else nothing seems to be done.

After sending the above email to claims handlers, I have still not been given a date nor amount of what I will be paid. Today I was told that they are awaiting the logbook which will take 2-4 days! I am informed by my car finance bank that they will not provide the logbook to Oakhurst until they settle and that it will only be a copy as the original has to come to me. So basically the process is stuck in a loop and will not proceed anywhere.

This whole process has also been time-consuming and costly as I have been phoning everyday, using my airtime and consultants never offer to call me back. Everyday I am tasked with the responsibility of micro-managing the claim. It is all just too much! I would really not like to deal with Oakhurst again.

Candice Alexis Jimmyns