This week a consumer contacted us with a complaint about accidental fees imposed by Accident Assist after a Kimberly accident. This tragic incident sheds light on a number of critical issues. It highlights the burdens of costly storage fees, lengthy service delays and exorbitant repair costs that’ve angered the consumer.
After the fatal collision, the person’s vehicle was towed to an impound lot, in this case a garage, not without challenges. Accident Assist claimed £254.50 additional cost for transferring the car to the garage, as a storage fee! They added another £76 for weekend storage, doubling the expected storage fees to an unplanned for extreme.
The customer accepted a refund of the greater amount plus an admin fee of £150. They were still so often left feeling frustrated over the ramped-up costs. The bill for repairing her car came to £1,200. This was a little less than Accident Assist’s full cost for their service overall. The vehicle did not reach the nominated garage until four days post accident causing a delay in the repair of the vehicle.
When we look at the timeline of events, we see many reasons for the disconnect on the customer side. We loaded the vehicle into storage for the weekend. Total average cost of storage per week is between £20 and £45. Accident Assist was charging exorbitant fees. They supposedly ramped up the prices since they waited to move the vehicle to the garage on Monday. By day five, the vehicle reached the repair garage at last. Their perspective offered insight about why the assessment was going to take up to four days.
Accident Assist even told the consumer about the extra charges. They informed us that the courtesy car would only be provided if the insurance company confirmed they would pay for the courtesy car service. Our customer was very perplexed and annoyed. In this case, the insurer was not reached until after the vehicle was already enroute to a repair garage.
Accident Assist further muddled things by slapping huge cancellation charges of £991.71. The attached fee would only be incurred if the customer chose to abandon their claim. It covered all of the above noted storage costs.
“When the customer chose to withdraw from making a claim, we instigated the cancellation process, which the customer was advised of on the initial call.” – AA Accident Assist