Aviva Auto Insurance Reviews

I am a female 61 years old never had an accident in my life haven’t had a ticket in more than 25 years. Two years ago on an icy rainy night, I literally hit a wall my car just slid! No damage to the wall no other cars involved but 10 thousand dollars to my car... I had accident forgiveness so one year after the accident my insurance went up Approximately 300 dollars? Year 2 after the accident my insurance has gone up an additional 600 dollars so in 2 years $9 hundred dollars? Where is the accident forgiveness? This is totally unacceptable and my agent keeps saying “well you had an accident” yes BUT I had accident forgiveness so how does that work? I work from home therefore it’s pleasure driving only. I park it in a garage it has onstar onboard snow tires in the winter BUT years of being a loyal customer I dinged $600 this 2020 renewal?

I was involved in a minor fender bender back in March. Everyone was so helpful at first. It was an awesome experience I was really impressed... for a while. Then the Aviva claims guy tells me to go to a "recommended" place to have my car checked out and adjusted. He says there's an adjuster there. So I go, they take pictures of my car, I give them my claim number. Everything seems normal from what I understand. Then a week later, the claims guy emails me and says I need to take my car in for pictures. I let him know that I did, to the place he recommends. He says they don't have the pictures and that I need to go back and do it again. I tell him that, no, I went, they took pictures, (the place is a 40-minute drive out of my way) and to figure out what's going on and get back to me ASAP so I know what steps to take next. I haven't heard from him since. This was in May, it's now almost November. They just seemed to abandon me. I don't know, I'll just go fix it myself.

Sharing my experience in regards to Aviva to hopefully shed some light on this insurer. I was with RBC for over 20 years, no issues, great service, quick response to claims etc. Simply the opposite is true with Aviva. The claims adjuster in my case has not even once answered his phone or returned my phone call even though they should respond within one business day. I have called multiple times. Email communication is an outrage, with lack of email response with two-three weeks at a time. Claims management takes four days to review the situation and respond. In short, it's the customer's fault the claims adjuster does not reply to phone/email. Simply, bad all around experience with this insurer.

Had to take them to court to get them to honour their all perils policy. Took 3 years but judgement went against them. They just didn't want to pay the claim, which was under $ 10,000. Employed a lawyer to find every technicality that he could. Must have cost them huge. Their ombudsmen told me that, "...he had been overruled by Corporate." More than 20 years a customer with no claims. The part that bothers me is that they face no consequences for their actions. FSCO is toothless and completely ineffective; a paper tiger without any power.

My car was written off early summer last year when a deer jumped out in front of my vehicle. Like many people said, they were very quick to get me a rental. However, upon settling on an amount they immediately demanded that I return the rental. This left me with very little time to make a decision about a new vehicle. No one should be rushed in this instance. Being in an accident is jarring enough. It can really derail you. Given a week I could have made a better educated decision about my replacement vehicle. I was really unimpressed with this.

Furthermore, I later found that their rates were so much higher than most other companies. I was paying $232/month. When I removed collision I was only dropped down to $211/month. Any other company I had give me a quote had me well in the $150/month range. It would be one thing if you got more for paying more but this really isn't the instance. My inexperience is what led me to go with Aviva in the first place.

No one I spoke with was ever rude. I suppose they had that going for them. Anyways, this is just a good example of 'buyer beware'. Do your research.

My car was stolen in the middle of the night right from my driveway as I slept only a few feet away. That was July, 2014. Aviva farms out claims settlement to Cunningham & Lindsay who seem determined to prove to Aviva that they save them as much money as possible. So you get caught in bureaucratic finger-pointing. The policy offered a rental vehicle which I had to exchange after only a few days as it was like a coffin on wheels and not equivalent to the 2011 V-6 Accord that was stolen. Within several weeks, I received an offer prepared by Aviva via C&L who then pulled the plug on the rental vehicle leaving me with nothing to drive. I thoroughly analyzed the 16-page offer and phoned up all ten dealerships to check on the comparables cited. There was no car for sale that low mileage. The offer was very confusing, listing the same ten cars twice using different prices. And only two of the comparable cars shown were the proper model (V-6 NAVI) which retails for at least $2000 higher. This evaluation was unprofessional and bush-league. When I complained and said I was not accepting the offer, it took many weeks more to get a revision which obviously didn't have any further research, nor did it correct for the wrong model. All in all, I didn't receive a cheque until mid-October, three months after the car was stolen and two months after my rental was cut off. Don't go with Aviva and assume that you're going to be protected from something like theft or an accident that's a write-off.
There are two other morals to the story.
1) Don't expect the police to be very helpful. They may pat your hand and say, "There, there.", but a stolen car is either carved up in pieces or on a ship across the ocean within 48 hours. Car theft is big crime but nobody seems to be effective or they're all toothless tigers.
2) Go ahead, buy a Honda and keep it in showroom condition. After all, the third world needs more black market vehicles and Hondas and Toyotas are at the top of the list. Realize that if you take your car in for service (and mine had been just the week before), some car jockey can easily get the keys (even electronic ones) easily duplicated at a car parts store or by a partner in crime.

In September 21013 another car had hit my parked car. The driver of the car did not have a valid licence in Canada and was also impaired.

I had submitted the claim to AVIVA the day it happened.

One week later AVIVA had responded to the claim.

The person assigned to my case then made me run around looking for missing information, visit the police station and apply for a collision report (after I found out insurance companies get them for free). Finally she mentioned that the diver was not insured.

It all sounded a little bit off to me so I contacted the other (drivers) insurance company my self. When I phoned them not only did I find out that the other person had insurance but also the lady assigned to my case had not even contacted them or submitted the claim on my behalf.

I emailed her back the second I found out; she responded back with the comment "you didn't have full coverage there is only so much I can do". I explained to her that I understood that and that I was willing to do all of this my self. However I felt as if she had gone to far by accusing the other party of not being insured.

My car was damaged during an oil change at Midas Muffler. They sent me to Aviva. They told me I should claim the rental car on my own insurance. My own insurance agent told me I would be deemed ‘at fault’ if I did so. Eventually Aviva relented and agreed to pay.

Six months later, I got a call from the rental company demanding payment for the rental car. Needless to say, I was getting very annoyed at this point and called Aviva. Fortunately I happened to have kept my notes from six months earlier and had the name of the manager I had dealt with. Eventually, she agreed Aviva really should have paid for the rental car and came up with a somewhat complicated way to do so involving me paying for the rental car and then being reimbursed by Aviva.

This is probably the worst customer service experiences I have ever had and I would not go near Aviva under any circumstances.