Really went to bat for us
by Raff on Sep 24, 2015
5 out of 5 stars
Car Insurance Reviews
Economical Insurance Auto Insurance Reviews
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Do not insure your car with this evil company!
Yesterday, my fiance was in a collision, thankfully he was not hurt but the car was wrecked. he was not at fault, and it says so in the police report. Since we put in a claim however Economical has given us 24 hours of hell, and I expect many more days of hell to come.
First, they refused to loan us a vehicle until they can get the police report, so they can prove he was not at fault. We gave them the incident number and the contact information of the police officer who responded to the scene. The incident number says my fiance is not at fault, they refuse to believe that, and they refuse to speak with the officer who responded to the crash. The lady who is in charge of the claim spent more time on the phone lecturing my fiance about how he doesn't have their most expensive insurance plan to compensate for this crash than actually helping. She also insisted we contact the police and get the report from them in order to speed up the claim process. Needless to say the insurance is responsible to collect the police report, so the police would not give it to us and were even horrified that the insurance asked us to collect it.
Next they asked my fiance to go to the impound by Friday (the collision happened on Wednesday) to fill out the proper release paperwork that would allow the insurance company to take the car from the impound lot. We get a call from the impound lot an hour later stating that the Economical has informed them that they would be picking up the car the next morning. They impound lot called us because they thought it was strange, because no paperwork had been signed yet to release the car, which had just came into the lot that day. My fiance said he would be there in the morning to sign said paperwork, remove the licence plates, and collect our belongings.
This morning he goes to the impound lot only to find out Economical had sent a tow to collect the car in the morning before he had gotten there. Somehow they had taken the car without the paperwork filled out and took our licence plates and belongs with them! They essentially have stolen the car because we did not have the paperwork filled out that gave them permission to take the vehicle. Now we are fighting them to get our belongs and licence plates back! The people we have spoken to on the phone have been nothing but rude and awful to us, essentially saying it's our fault they took the car without our consent.
On top of that the lady in charge of the claim won't answer our phone calls. I am outraged! Do not get insurance with this company and save yourself the stress and horror we are going through now.
They caused me more stress than the car accident I was in, and someone died in it. I was 100% not at fault, and yet Economical made me feel guilty about it. My girlfriend and I are college students, just trying to get by.
Their communication was terrible. We phoned on a Saturday and their weekend rep said she could get us a rental for five days. Three days after we get the rental we get a phone call saying we were only supposed to get it for three days and it had to be returned or else it was at my own expense. They also weren't giving us any concrete information on the claim and when we tried calling back for an inquiry, the lady we were dealing with started dodging our calls. So we pressed 0 to ask someone else, and that person was more helpful, but then as I was sitting in my doctors office waiting to get checked for injuries the insurance lady phoned back and told me off, as if I was some kind of jerk who had to be put in his place. She then asked me to stop calling them until they had more info.y broker got through to her and got her to extend the rental period but what a crappy experience.
And then the settlement offer came. 2/3rds the price of what I paid for the vehicle. I tried telling them that I only had it for less than 6 months and that it had some new parts, and she didn't care. I told her that I went to the Canadian black book site and found the same model/year for six different ads and she didn't care. I'm SOL and can barely make rent--not a fun way to start off the school year.
These people would make so much more money if they didn't treat their clients like enemies. Because now I'm taking my business else-where, and they could have hade for years if they were even willing to just give me a fair price
We insured our Nissan Xterra Off-road with economical after a big blowout with AMA (they cancelled our insurance (& didn't notify us) because they tried to take whole annual premium out at once, instead of monthly payments. Obviously it was NSF.)
About 4-5 months after signing with Economical, my husband had his first accident (ever) when he had black ice, slid off the road and hit a tree.... On December 22 at 10pm. Economical (and everyone else) was closed for the holidays so we filed police report and waited until they reopened to file a claim. They were polite to deal with and were understanding of the situation. They took time to explain the process to us and make sure we were comfortable as we had never had to do an insurance claim before and really had no clue what are were doing. They recommended we deal with one of thier preferred garages (Boyds Autobody) for the repairs so we agreed and the vehicle was picked up by a flatbed in January when the shop opened be the adjustor gave his numbers.
From that point on, we lived a nightmare. Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The shop had trouble finding parts, then the new hood they ordered was cracked, they couldn't find the special tools they needed, the paint shop was overbooked, they found extra damage to the vehicle frame....
Eventually it has been over 2 months and we still didn't have our vehicle back. The rental cars through insurance had run out and the repair shop "doesn't do loaner cars anymore" so we're were stuck borrowing a family members car. We were also supposed to be getting weekly updates from the shop, and tha just want happening so we would pop in every once in a while to get an update (for the first 1.5 months, the vehicle didn't move. Husband marked the tire with chalk because he didn't believe their BS).
Finally got our SUV back after 2 months after a pop in visit & they said they "forgot to call to say it was ready". We got the keys, got in, started it & looked up to see them lock the door & turn the lights off. We then spent 2 days using a vehicle with no heat in -30*C weather waiting for the shop to open on Monday. They told us they forgot to reconnect something with the heater so that was fixed but it still was running way to high - 1000rpm at idle....
Apparently that was due to the engine being cold....
We were extremely leery about it so about a week later, husband took the vehicle to our Nissan dealership to have their repair guys give it a boo. Turns out they put a n improperly sized fan belt on....
Husband called me from dealership and said they were refusing to let him drive it off the lot, I called insurance claim person (side note, during this whole thing, were actually got swapped out to 3 different claims people, but everyone left really good notes so it wasn't a problem) and asked what to do, they said call Boyd's and listen to those instruction; Boyd's said dealership were idiots and to drive out over, even agreeing to all liability of anything happened on route.
On route to Boyd's, the belt blew on the highway, causing a loss in all power steering and braking. The belt ripped off the fan, smashed the radiator and generally undid everything they had just fixed. By sheer luck , husband drifted it into a roadside turn out were I had a very loud, vey heated conversation with Boyd's and they sent a flatbed. Next call was to insurance claims person who immediately apologized and said she was escalating it internally.
The next day, I got a call from the Western Canada VP or Economical Insurance who apologized profusely & essentially asked what we're wanted to do. We weren't comfortable with Boyd's touching the vehicle again so he arranged to have it sent to our dealership for the repairs, a complete review of all of Boyd's work and said that they would be pursuing Boyd's for reimbursement of the cost of this, and Boyd's would be providing us with a rental vehicle until the dealership finished the work.
He also asked for my permission to have a rep from Boyd's get in touch to get details directly from me, which I agreed to. The next day, I spent about 2 hours in a conference call with the Western Canada VP of Economical and the VP of Boyd's Autobody's Canadian branch.
When we picked up our vehicle from the dealership, we found out that they don't actually deal with insurance companies, but Economical had explained the situation and had a money write sent over that morning to pay them before we picked it up.
I was later informed that the manager at the repair shop had been fired over the mess and Boyd's was on Economical's s**tlist as a result.
Couldn't believe how hard the insurance company fought for us, especially only after a couple of months on the policy.
Ooh, and did I mention when it came time to renew the policy the next year, out premiums actually went DOWN!
We have since added a second vehicle to the policy and have our house insurance with them as well.