Re: Really need your help: Malaysian vehicle incident, Workshops won't do 3rd party!
I think it is apt that I give a final conclusion to this story.
To summarize.. Malaysian vehicle parked next to my car at a condo near Marina Boulevard had hit my car whilst exiting. The driver had initially asked me to claim insurance but said that he was willing to settle if I could get a quote below S$1,000. My initial quote from MA was S$5,000 which included replacement of bumper, lights, parking sensor and respray. I did try to explore other option of getting a lower quote but it will involve tolerating a scratched headlight and potentially malfunctioned parking sensor. Also, no bumper replacement.. just knock out and respray. If I had pursued the MA option, I would have to claim against my own insurance and later face the complication and potentially a higher insurance premium should my insurer fail to reclaim the losses against the other insurer. Which would you take? After careful consideration, I decided to make a full repair at MA and take the risk of higher premium and losing my NCD. This was what happened after my repair at MA:
1. I paid the S$800 excess out of my own pocket. I was told that this was "uninsured loss" that I should bear. My own insurer said that there is nothing I can do about it. The remaining bill from MA will be claimed against my own policy of which they will submit a claim against the malaysian insurer for reimbursement. If successful, my NCD will be returned to me. If not, my NCD will go down and my renewal quote likely to go up (as if i had damaged my own car)
2. I spoke to a few of my classmates who are lawyers and decided to just try my luck by writing to the company stating a claim for personal losses. I just wrote an email stating my claim for this $800 uninsured loss. Thereafter, I followed up with calls and finally I followed up with a proper letter stating my loss and wish to be reimbursed. I was quite surprised that within a week, they agreed to settle my claim for this uninsured loss of S$800 dollars. To be fair, I found out they had registered a SG branch and had listed the branch rep contact. So I had contacted him and explained my situation. He gave me the contact of the MY claims officer and so this helped cut short the entire process.
3. After I signed the discharge letter from the Malaysian insurer (they gave me a check for the S$800) I sent a copy of this + all my email correspondences to my own insurer informing them that they should expedite their own claim against the Malaysian insurer. Unfortunately, this took a longer time to resolve because the claims officer of my insurer simply bo chup. In fact, I had to email both him as well as the malaysian insurer claims officer and hurry them both to conclude their internal investigations.
4. In the end, my insurer was successful in the claim. I was successful in my personal claim. My NCD was returned and policy was renewed at same rate.
On hindsight, this was the best possible outcome but as can see it takes quite abit of personal effort.
