Car Insurance - to claim or not to claim, that is the question

EF advice required, please. Hopefully this hasn't been asked before - couldn't find a thread on this.

Mrs Angoose recently had a momentary lapse of reason when manoeuvring our car (which as with so many SUV-type things has appalling visibility of any nearby obstacles) and brushed a low-lying chunk of rock in a car park.

Our car now has a bit of a scrape, which only needs a little paint n' polish, but in Switzerland will probably cost a lot to repair.

So my question - apart from the simple repair cost vs excess calculation, is there anything else I should consider before deciding whether to claim on our (Vollkasko) car insurance or not?

I know that in the UK, it's often better not to claim, because even for no-fault claims it can affect your No Claims Bonus. But in Switzerland, I don't think that the NCB is such a big deal?

For instance, I have heard that if you claim too much on your Vollkasko here in Switzerland, the insurance company can refuse to cover you on a Vollkasko basis.

I would be grateful for any pointers.

I'll start a different thread asking about divorce procedures here

In general it doesn't do any harm to claim. The insurance company will calculate whether it's worth have the insurance pay and lose part of your bonus, or whether you're better off paying yourself.

Unless you're making regular claims on the insurance they're not going to throw you out.

The main question will be your excess.

Whatever damage you have it guaranteed to be CHF2500 plus.

Tip #1

Next big hail storm leave the car out. Hail damage usually has no excess and get the rock damage repaired at the same time.

Tip #2

Leave it and hope that in the future someone drives into you or your missus does that same again and get both repaired together with just one excess...

Depending on your insurance plan and excess my advice is generally to claim; completely different system here than in the UK incomparable really. These types of claim are very common here, you'll normally get a discount if you use an "approved" garage. This could even be covered under your insurance plan without excess. Call them up and inquire, you'll find they're far more helpful here than in the UK!

DIY.

Tom

There are similar experiences here from people facing this dilemma: https://www.englishforum.ch/insuranc...know-cost.html

Loving these tips!

Indeed, as Mrs Angoose and I were driving somewhere this morning, someone nearly drove into us, and I was "yeah, bring it on, that would be quite convenient now - get all the damage repaired at once!"

With regard to hail damage - I thought that if you have a covered parking space, and leave your car out in the hail, the nice insurers will also not pay for all the damage, as you're partially culpable (or whatever the right expression is)

LIY (Leave it yourself). I.e. who cares so long as it's not actually affected the integrity of the vehicle. I've loads of scrapes on my car, but I intend on keeping it until it dies.

Likewise!

Tom

And if you are out shopping?

Or at work?

Or driving?

Tom

With Vollkasko, you can usually claim one self-caused damage per year without your premium going up, so I'd definitely claim it unless you are not willing to cover the deductible. Or chose not to and claim it when you damage the same bumper. Companies here don't seem to want to do spot repairs and tend to replace the whole bumper.

Whenever hail strikes, whatever you're out doing, you absolutely 100% must rush home, hide your car away in a suitably covered space, raise all your window blinds, bring in your expensive patio furniture, wrap everything else in cotton wool etc etc.

That's why we all love insurance - you giveth, but you may never taketh

I think that's what I'll do. Maybe I'll try to cover it up a little bit with some DIY, just to reduce the embarrassment factor.

Then I'll just get all the repairs done at once whenever we sell the car.

Today's update - I checked the excess for Parkschaden on my insurance policy. CHF 3,000!!! I had a silent weep.

wow, happy to not have excess for parking damage, someone made a dent in my door and it ended up costing 1800 CHF to the insurance company (I thought it would "buff out" for a much lower cost). They also completely cleaned the car inside.

That’s insane. I thought it’s usually CHF 300 or 0. A new bumper + spray paint will cost about CHF 1200-1800 unless you drive a Ferrari or something.

I found Swiss insurance companies to be very fair and pay up quickly, a couple of times they called me and said it would work out better for me if I dropped the claim and paid myself; no compulsion just advice.

Keep in mind that the insurance company is neither your friend nor your ally. As long as it pays they will do whatever they can to keep milking you.

Of course your full casko bonus (FCB) will suffer by you making a claim. But the total monetary cost of that is massively misrepresented by the insurance, so much so that it almost looks like a lie by omission.

Consider this example, bullet two at premium ladder step T11 ( here's the bonus ladder). They only calculate until you're back down at T11, but in reality you keep paying more later on still because without the claim you'd have moved down to T6 by then, and continually lower until you'd have reached T1 in 2031. After that the difference decreases by one step each year until the with-a-claim-now alternative also reaches T1 in 2036. Thus the actual cost is 5 steps on the bonus ladder each year until 2031, and 4-3-2-1-0 steps in the following years. Therefore, on the Allianz' ladder, the actual tally is 380% or 3.8*2500 (2500 is the premium at 100% in their example).

And if you make a claim now and another one (or more) before 2036, the year you reach T1 is pushed out even further thus the tally for this year's claim even higher than 380%. Of course each reader's actual tally will differ because insurance companies use different ladders and people will be on different steps on that ladder.

3rd party liability bonus (3PB) and full casko bonus (FCB) have their individual bonus value and bonus ladder (no bonus for partial casko). OP's case should affect FCB only as there's no 3rd party involved/damaged. In cases where 3PB is also affected, it needs to be considered as well in the cost calculation above, meaning the cost is generally higher still.

For the cases where your car gets dented or scratched by an unknown culprit, or where the driver has fled from the accident, you can place a claim at the Nationale Garantiefonds Schweiz . The deductible is 1k, you need a police report, and the Fonds will have the damage inspected by one of their specialists. AFAIK this will have no effect on your insurance, bonus or otherwise. This doesn't apply to OP's case, but it may have people think twice about taking parking accident insurance in the first place.

Sorry to be blunt, angoose-with-a-3k-deductible, but it seems like you're being had over a barrel from behind by the insurance agent. Perhaps unless your car is worth gazillions, but your posting history implies that you're clever and use relatively inexpensive cars with a list price in the $30k range so that's unlikely to be the case.

Men get discriminated by the insurance companies. It's usually better for the wife to get the car insured (this may be less clear in multinational marriages as nationality is a factor as well).

That said, you can get out at any time from a car insurance contract by changing the holder, including by switching it to the spouse (for a leased car you do want to coordinate with the leasing company beforehand).

And one last thing:

Full casko is generally overpriced and money wasted once the ICE car is older than 4 years. If you're not aware of that already, you may want to familiarise yourself with the diminishing "ZeitWert" according to your contract/T&C and how that affects the maximum payout. Full casko premium is a (mostly) constant percentage of the list price even if your car is 20 years old and near-worthless.

Oh, Urs Max - you give some really good advice there. I have to admit, I had never given too much thought to my car insurance. I took the policy when I bought our (indeed, not-too-expensive!) car, and I just did the standard comparis.ch search, picked one which seemed all right, and have stuck with it ever since.

I should review it before it's next due for renewal, or I should try the trick of "selling" it to Mrs Angoose, if I want to change sooner - I didn't know about that. Of course, she'll probably drive a hard bargain now, with that big scrape down the side

Happy Christmas everyone, and thanks for all the input

Had my fair share of scrapes and scratches and fender benders over the years, and i just talk to the garage for an estimate, they talk to the insurers, and the insurer will tell me whether I should claim or not and the consequences on my policy. So just talk to them.