See other thread regarding my stolen van -> it turn up !

All the windsurfing gear and most of the camping gear still in it. Some damage - looks like they side-swiped their house, as the van has a light grey concrete-render embedded in it.

Wohoo !! tell us how it was found.

Glad you got it back!

In another thread people asked for details - at the time I didn't have much... and I still dont.

The local Police had found the vehicle abandoned only a few suburbs from my home. It was towed to a tow-company holding yard. Not sure how the towy got it onto the flat-bed, given the wheels where gearbox-locked and they didn't have the car-key (I shudder to think of them dragging it up... hopefully they used a dolly.)

I went to the yard to find... all the windsurfing gear still in the van ! woohoo! 13in touchscreen-stereo was still in it too. And most other stuff. Just some camping gear and gopro, headphones, minor stuff. As you can see from the pic, the LHS of the van is damaged - it extends from the passenger-door to behind the rear-wheel, including cracked headlight and minor dent on the rear-barn-door.

Looking closely at the paint work, it looks like it was scraped up against a rendered-concrete corner wall, as the grey marks contain grey-paint + concrete-bits. The odometer only had about 50-100km's added to it, but the fuel tank was empty. My guess is _they_ scraped it up trying to hide it, opened the rear doors to find all the gear... then said f*** it.

It turned up at the holding-yard on May 17th. It took more than 3 weeks and at least a few complaints to the insurance company before they decided to move it, then it still took another 3 weeks before it was moved it to repairer. Now that it is at the repairer, it has been about 3 weeks for the insurance company to organise an engine+gearbox inspection.

At this point circa 9+ weeks later, I still dont know if the insurance company is going to repair the vehicle or write-it-off.

Wow - I'd be making a big fuss if assessing took more than a couple of weeks

And never see a dolly used yet in the many recoveries I've witnessed........ skull dragged for sure.
Doesn't hurt it though its just a bit of a skid....

The period while the van was missing (before being found), was about 2 months.

In that time, I called the local Police on numerous occasions - the response was mostly, "that person is not in right now, can we get them to call you back" of which they never did. I understand prioritisation/pressure, but if you are assigned a work-load and someone calls you about it, then I think it is quite reasonable to call back. Eventually my partner received a call back, she had a chat. Then coincidentally the next work-day the vehicle was found.

In that time, speaking with QLD Roads & Transport, they consider a vehicle as unrecovered at 31 days - the insurance company has their own definition... why it doesn't match, is beyond my comprehension. I had placed claim for the van - that claim took some time to "work through the details" because the the insurance company dont talk to the Police (such as to clarify the stolen-date), which is again weird.

Eventually the insurance company decided that it was stolen, so would pay up. As the pic shows, it is a Mercedes ... having lived in a van for a few years, having a good van size and quality, is worth the extra cost. The first claim offer was for a manual-transmission small-body van coming in a $33000 -> clearly the representative didn't even read the policy which stated "automatic transmission". So another offer of $35000. Given we have "carsales.com.au" and other vehicle websites, it doesn't take more than a few mins to determine that the offer... was... not even close to market value.

Some weeks later a second offer was put to me - that offer was based on an _independent_ valuation. What is interesting about that is the valuation did list the same model, but didn't include any of the add-ons. That valuation was $51000. Again carsales shows that is woeful - at at about the time of writing this, for a roughly same spec vehicle is going for $75000.

What is somewhat crazy about that ^^ process - the van was found the day after the $51k offer. I had called the insurer to let them know to put a hold on all claims. Then about a week later - which by this point the van was now the care/responsibility of the insurer - I get notified that they are waiting for a response to the offer.

I still dont have any info about where the van was found. And I'm still waiting for the insurer to determine whether it will repair or pay-out.

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Mark _australia said..
Wow - I'd be making a big fuss if assessing took more than a couple of weeks

And never see a dolly used yet in the many recoveries I've witnessed........ skull dragged for sure.
Doesn't hurt it though its just a bit of a skid....

The pic shows some only-few-weeks-old nobbies on some new rims. Might have been dragged, but it would have been kicking and screaming.

I am making a bit of a fuss over the various delays. I dont think 10 weeks (or whatever it ends up being) is a reasonable wait time to find out if the vehicle is to be repaired. Its a van, not a house that has been flooded - it has been taken on an joy-ride and has some dents.

I had lodged a complaint for the below-market-value offers. The PDS (policy disclosure statement) clearly says "market value" which then goes in to some detail that the intention is to be reasonably able to purchase a similar make/model/spec vehicle from the available pool.

I then had to make complaint (which is new and independent of the existing filing) that the vehicle was unmoved from the towing yard.

Then another because it hadn't moved from the towing-yard (another new complaint).

And another because I still dont have an answer to the repair-vs-pay-out (another new complaint).

... maybe it is me... I dont think it is unreasonable to have each of those be an addendum to the first filing for a claim, be it a claim-variation, complaint, whatever... as it is a "whole process" of interacting with the customer whom is paying for a contracted-policy.

Man that is sh1tful - I really feel for you there.

Other random info...

The insurance company assessor doesn't have a mobile-phone, but instead has a line-line. This person goes off-prem to inspect the vehicle - that is the dominant part of the job. Why in this era is a land-line used at all, or even used with call-diversion. I've been told that "we've been playing tag" with the assessor, where the "we" is many different people involved (myself, the towing-company, the repairer, other colleagues at the insurer, the mechanic, etc). A mobile-phone solves that problem completely.

The vehicle was stolen because the key was stolen too. That means the vehicle-key is in circulation thus the keys need to be completely re-coded; I cannot take the vehicle as is because it might just be taken again, which is fine/expected. The panel damage is somewhat extensive - looking at other vehicles in the workshop, the damage isn't out of place.... but its not trivial damage, so needs to be large enough work-slot available to the repairer. What was not expected, those key replacements are not yet even ordered because the insurer considers both _independent_ bits of work (panel work, keys changed) as one job.... even though they are done by different companies.

Yet another mini-complaint to request the immediate ordering of the key-set and that work done, at least until the panel-shop can allocate time. For comparison, I am certainly allowed to drive a car which say has a dent in a door (while waiting for the repair slot). But the insurer tried to insist that that option wasn't available.

Given the world's current shortages of just about everything, and remembering that the East Coast has had quite a bit of flooding... doesn't bode well for the time it will take to get the van back to me.

In most of those posts, I have been describing the vehicle-insurance. There was quite a bit of "stuff" taken too, which mostly was recovered.

I had contents-insurance for all of the stuff. When I made the contents-claim during the early phase prior to vehicle recovery, that insurer was expecting one or two items of say $5k - it turns out that is a common claim. My claim was for more than $40k - I a spreadsheet and receipts for almost everything. That process of claiming, needed to include where it was purchased.

The insurer eventually came back and said "you did say a lot was taken" - they had decided just to lump-sum pay. Turns out they they gave me a call the day after recovery, by which time I had identified and/or recovered most stuff. They were on the phone to me to work out how to pay the lump-sum. Since they had the spreadsheet, they just asked for an email of the items missing. The next pay I had a bank-transfer and some credit in various stores. The claim did take a while as I had to put a list together with lots of details - other than that the whole process was about a week of time and good service.

Those two claims have turned out to be at opposite ends of the customer-service spectrum.

Interestingly, when I made first contact with the insurer, I did ask what process I should use - the recommendation was to _not_ claim for the contents as it would be done together with the vehicle claim. That info was provided by the vehicle-claim department. That same department then later said that that info is incorrect. Every phone call is recorded - I think their teams should make use of the "your call is being recorded for training purposes".

This is why I stopped paying full comp insurance 20 years ago. It's even worse for motorcycles. The only grinners of this type of junk insurance seem to be those that have a mate that steels and torches it.

The cops are smashed at the moment.

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jn1 said..
This is why I stopped paying full comp insurance 20 years ago

How much is your car worth?

The last post was just over two weeks ago - another update to the saga - this time with a twist.

Before a decision can be made whether a vehicle is written-off or to be repaired, the insurer needs to have a reasonable idea of the repair costs and of the residual value vs the payout. Since the van was stolen, it needed to be evaluated to determine if there was any significant damage to engine or running gear - that was where it was at circa last post.

The day posted here, I got a status update on the panel-damage ~ $20k and the vehicle was to be taken for engine/etc evaluation. Two weeks go by and yet again no further update.

So I call the insurer again and I finally get some positive news -> the insuring-company will repair the vehicle ! The next step is for me to "prove ownership" to Mercedes so that the security-coded-vehicle-keys, can be replaced ( which is easy to do because I purchased it from the same dealership ).

And the twist -> the assessor "...has left the company and their workload has been assigned to another staff member". But apparently the new person has been overloaded due to that. If my experience was a common occurrence, I can only imagine the piles of doggy-do-do that has now got to be cleaned up.

Hi mate ,yeh I can relate dealing with insurance companies ,I ended up taking my case to AFCA and had a ok result in the end .
the insurer was SGIO one company I would not recommend.
Goodluck .

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mathew said..
See other thread regarding my stolen van -> it turn up !

All the windsurfing gear and most of the camping gear still in it. Some damage - looks like they side-swiped their house, as the van has a light grey concrete-render embedded in it.

Fantastic that it's turned up. I hope all the insurance crap gets sorted soon.

Just an update to the saga... I now have my van back as of the weekend just past. Fingerprint-dust everywhere, been sitting in the rain unmoved for months resulting in it needing a new battery, still not repaired.

One positive aspect is that the car-keys have been replaced/recoded.

The repair work is booked in, but since the vehicle is fitted-out as a camper, almost all of the fit-out first needs to be removed due to the whole side of the vehicle needing to be replaced.

will be ready just in time for LG