Review of First Alternative Car Insurance (Fully Comp)

After several years of relatively trouble free motoring, I had the misfortune to be involved in an accident in December 2007. Unfortunately, First Alternative have proved to be absolutely useless at processing my claim and, what are we now - almost into June 2008, it is still unresolved.

The staff just seem to have no interest whatsoever in helping and I can tell that they are reading from crib sheets everytime I call. Moreover, they make it very apparent that their primary motivation is very much to recover monies (potentially) owed to First Alternative, rather than those owed to me.

The 'affiliated' bodyshop did a pretty poor job of repairing my car and it took them six weeks to do that. To compound matters, once they'd finished the job they drove the car (without my consent) from Newbury to Reading to drop it off, rather than bring it on a trailer.

In the six months that the claim has been open, I have had precisely two calls from FA and one of those only occurred as a result of me calling and requesting it for the umpteenth time. The first one was from my designated point of contact to tell me that he was having trouble locating the M4 on a map and could I kindly send him a diagram!

I hope that FA will get this resolved eventually but, in the meantime, I am several hundred pounds out of pocket and have the prospect of a default 'fault' claim appearing on my insurance, even though it hasn't been settled yet.