Excellent customer service (Direct Line)

Name: Coxy1974

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Product:	Direct Line
Date:	18/01/07 (565 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick to get in touch with, easy procedures, excellent service

Disadvantages: Auto Glass call centre staff are rude

I probably drive 40k miles a year so it inevitable that at some stage I would get a chipped windscreen. You'd think this would happen on the motorway but mine didn't. I'd cleared the motorway and was half a mile from home. Some guy was in his garden mowing his grass and must have hit a stone in the grass because it flew out of the mower and straight onto my windscreen. I thhought I'd been shot it made such a loud bang.

I pulled up on my drive and checked the damage. A small chip and no crack. After a little rant about 'that's just my luck' I remembered that you can get stone chips repaired for free through the insurance without it affecting your no claims and you don't have to pay any excess.

I dug out my insurance details and rang Direct Line claims line. I didn't know what to expect really as I was a new customer with them (I did insure a car with them years ago and the claim when someone kindly trashed my car went through OK) but the lady I spoke to confirmed that I was covered but someone from Auto Glass would need to come out to assess and confirm it could be repaired. She booked me a slot with them and the whole process took about 10 minutes.

I live in Derby and am based for work in Leicester so I asked for them to come out to me whilst I was at work. I waited for them to turn up and by 4pm I'd still had no call to say that they were here. I rang Direct Line who put me through to Auto Glass.

The person I spoke to was a complete nightmare. He couldn't decide what his name was (he gave me at least 3 different ones) said he didn't know what had happened and booked me a different time slot. He didn't seem to understand that if someone was going to come out during the week I would need someone from Leicester but if it was a weekend I'd need someone to from Derby. It all became most confusing. He also asked me if I thought it could be repaired. Now I'm not an expert and I thought that was what they needed to assess by coming out to the car.

In the end he hung up on me - no warning or anything and I most certainly wasn't irate. I was fuming after he'd put the phone down so I rang Direct Line back and spoke to a guy called Gavin. He was excellent and found out what had happened for me and booked me a time slot for the weekend with the Auto Glass Derby office. He also said that should the windscreen crack in the meantime then this would be no fault of my own and as a goodwill gesture Direct Line would waive the excess on replacing the windscreen. I couldn't have asked for anything better.

The guy who came out arrived a little early, was polite, checked over the windscreen, found 3 other chips that I didn't know were there and repaired all 4 for free! He was there for 30 minutes max and even cleaned the windscreen inside and out for me. You can't tell that there was ever a chip there. The service from him was excellent. I signed the job sheet and he was gone. Job done and all before 9.30 on a saturday morning.

The whole service from Direct Line was excellent and I could not fault this. The only thing that let them down was Auto Glass - not the person who came out to fix the windscreen but their call centre staff.

Summary: I'll definitely use Direct Line again and am considering moving house insurance for the discounts