Run away from them very fast (AXA Insurance)

Member Name: aliis

Product:	AXA Insurance
Date:	18/05/01 (405 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Had the good grace to pay for a missed repair

Disadvantages: Very poor approved mechanics, Bureaucratic

Three years ago I was involved in my first-ever (and so far only) accident as a driver. A very, very big lorry rear-ended me as I waited to enter a roundabout. The back hatch of our Corsa was ruined and the entire rear window shattered, spraying me and the interior of the car and boot with glass shards (we are still finding those). AXA were our insurance company and I phoned them as soon as I was in a fit state to drive home. They eventually managed to arrange a courtesy car, but when I tried to find out where their nearest approved repairer was, I discovered it was ten miles away near the centre of Glasgow. This was not the most convenient location, but as it was an approved repairer or fork out ourselves, there was no option.
After the first week without our car, and with a diesel hire car which was not nearly as economical as the Corsa, I called the repairer to find out how much longer they would take to fix the damage. The initial reply was that they were going to have to wait for parts from somewhere. The long story short is that it was nearly a month before we got our own car back, and even then my husband found a list of things that had not been done properly - the rear hatch didn't fit, it had been sprayed a non-matching shade of red, and it was letting water into the boot. They had not even bothered to replace the rear windscreen wiper because it wasn't actually broken. A repair assessor was finally sent to inspect the repairs and the garage were instructed to proceed with the remedial work.
A month after that the exhaust fell off and when we took it to the exhaust centre the mechanic immediately pronounced it the result of a rear-end shunt. The "approved" repairers had totally missed it. We claimed this work back from AXA and they paid up without demur, but I complained to them about their so-called approved garage and recommended they be removed from their list as their workmanship was below par and their service even more so.

As a result I would not trust AXA with my car insurance (or any other sort) ever again.

Summary: