Exploitation!

I was involved in a vehicle accident n 14 June 2019 with a client from Santam Insurance.

After much back and forth my claim was assigned to Julia Mogase in Johannesburg at their Outsourced Legal Branch.

Finally Julia sent me an offer letter that Santam are only responsible for 70% of the damages to my vehicle and I am responsible for 30% of the damages to their insured vehicle.

This in itself is preposterous as their client seemingly distracted swerved out for vehicles that were stationary in front of them at a red robot and proceeded through the red robot and collided with my vehicle which was crossing the intersection on a green light.

Upon seeing the insured was going to cross my line of travel I attempted to swerve my vehicle to my right to avoid her yet she continued without trying to avoid the accident that was about to happen.

I have 3 witnesses that were standing at 3 different angles of the accident scene and all 3 have stated that she went through the red robot and was the cause of the accident yet Santam are saying their insured denies that there were vehicles stationary and she did not do what myself and 3 witnesses have claimed. They then came back after I reconfirmed with the 3 witnesses that she had swerved out for the vehicles in front of her and drove through the red robot colliding into me saying that they stand with their offer and I should seek legal counsel and take the matter to court because they are done debating the facts. I even sent them court cases where courts have ruled in the favour of a person going through a green robot but this does not seem to matter much to them.

I then escalate this to their higher management and have been waiting for a week for an outcome on this claim for the full damages to my vehicle. Melvin Naidoo promised to get back to me by close of business 16 August 2019.

According to SAIA code of conduct:

8.6.4.2 Each third party claim will be dealt with in terms of its own merits, and the quantum of such a claim will be determined, applying fair legal practices.

Fair legal practice does not include stating that a vehicle being driven through a green light at an intersection is responsible to avoid accidents when another vehicle wilfully ignored a red light and proceeded into the intersection.

I have not at all instituted any claim to them for car hire nor loss of income as I work for myself and have lost a huge amount of income because of this. My vehicle is accumulating storage costs at the panelbeater and yet they are more worried about what their client says to actually accept the matter that their client was 100% at fault and move on.

Seems like we now know why they are the biggest Insurance company in South Africa with good profits because they don’t care on how they can save R30 000. Just imagine saving R30 000 on 100 000 claims????? No wonder they have such a sterling profit on their underwriting results because they seem to think that what they are doing is treating the customer fairly. Even if a third party is not your customer you are bound by law to treat their claim and circumstances on a claim with fair merit and adjudicate each claim on its own merit and not with a standard blanket approach. I also have seen a letter that was written by Santam for another claim where another Third Party wanted to claim from them on a separate and unrelated claim where they have stated that their client had absolute right of way through a green robot and is not their responsibility to avoid accidents. This accident happened now in May 2019.

So only when it suits them is it defined that you can go through the green robot without having to avoid accidents.

I implore you to take your own words to heart and actually be insurance good and proper even if the person is not your client because what you are doing to the un-insured public is tantamount to exploitation.