My last year with Flux

Well where do I start.... How about with the good stuff......

Got a quote from the Adrian Flux stand at Japfest 2/SXOC Weekender and the guy could not have been more helpful, professional attitude and the perfect sales staff that I have grown to expect from Flux over the last few years....

Then came my accident. Again, Flux staff could not have been anymore help but being just brokers they gave me the contact details for the underwriters or insurers or whatever - which in this case was Equity Red Star....

Now the fun REALLY begins.

I ring up and report the claim to which all the information is taken down by a seemingly helpful lady;

A week passes, so I rang them again expressing my concern that I have not received any paperwork and also make it noted (again) that I wish to salvage what I can from the vehicle.

Some time passes and I get bored of promised phone calls that are never received, I kept leaving messages for the claim handler and nothing gets seems to get sorted. I emailed the complaints department and 48 hours later I had a very helpful email from them saying that they take all complaints seriously and contacted me by phone to sort out my issues.

Great (I though), it seemed like the ball was actually rolling and after 8 weeks of arguing over the vehicles value we eventually came to a value that I was happy with and able to retain my vehicle. The only stipulation was that they would deliver the vehicle to me, I strip it, return the shell and they dispose of it before sending me my cheque, the lady even sent me an email with the total in (minus my excess) - to which I was happy (I wasn't happy with the valuation but I was happy that I was able to get parts back).

Oh, did I mention that they would deliver the vehicle? Well they would but Copart (where the vehicle was held) said that they were not able to deliver the vehicle - this gave me great confidence in their ability as to how they were going to get the shell back minus the entire suspension!! After a bit of haggling on Shiply I find a great company (A1 recovery - would recommend them to anyone by the way!) who were able to retrieve the vehicle and deliver it to me.

Thanks to some great help from Monkey :sxoc: we were able to strip the car pretty quickly over a couple of dry weekends. Copart are then advised of the vehicles location and state..... they then send out a collection vehicle and one man with no equipment to move it. So that meant that I had to take ANOTHER day off work for it to be collected - the second collection attempt was much more successful and again (A1 Recovery) they did a fantastic job.

Nearly a month passes - no contact from them until suddenly I get a reply to an email that I sent when they collected the vehicle advising me of where to post my V5 and insurance certificate etc.

I come home today to a letter - I open it and very happy to see the headed notepaper with a 'please find enclosed' line...... only to then read the rest of the letter to find that they have taken an extra £1500 quid of for salvage..... After we had already agreed on a value for the vehicle AFTER salvage.

To say I am outraged and angry is a complete understatement. I obviously will be chasing the £1500 owed to me straight away in the morning.

I am sorry to say that I doubt I will ever insure with Flux again - but not because of their service, that has always been good to me.... but because of Equity Red Star. Even if I have to pay more money to avoid them it would be money well spent. If I actually needed a car to get to work and back I would have been totally screwed as the accident was back in September.


Equity Red Star's customer service is absolutely shocking, I have never in my life felt like a 'piece of meat' that they make you feel. I did not feel like a client or a customer to them at any point - maybe that's harsh, when they started helping me I thought 'oooo they are actually doing something right' - but no, they can't even do what they said on paper right!!

They are slow with responses, make mistakes, and even worse the stories I were told by the staff on the phone changed everytime I rang!!

Equity Red Star had/have NO expertise in dealing with modified vehicles from what I could tell and to be in that line of work/market it is utterly disgraceful.

I will avoid them by all means even if I have to pay more, nobody should be treated the way I was and nobody should have to go through an ordeal like that over your 'pride and joy'

[/RANT]

That totally sucks dude, but you could still go through Adrian Flux, just specify that you will not take out a policy underwritten by ERS, I'm sure Flux have other underwriters too (My Flux policy last year was underwritten by Groupama).

Tbh flux have been shit (for me at least) for ages
26
6 years no claims
Never had a crash
Never had any offences
Garage
CW8 area 0 crime area according to the official stats the gov post up
Employed professional mechanic

Quote £1200 what car you ask maybe a skyline or something?? Nope
An m reg 2 litre NA celica
Sky £400 ;)

Shit i think i'm with ERS :(

And sounds like you've had an awful time with them!bad times :down:

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Originally Posted by pdh 14a

Shit i think i'm with ERS :(

And sounds like you've had an awful time with them!bad times :down:

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Awful time doesn't even describe it. If you never have an accident I'm sure that they are fine :wack: but as ever when you need an insurance company they turn out to be complete :censored:

As for the N/A Celica, my heavily modified S13 was cheaper to insure than my old Escort Si workhorse!!

I can't fault Flux other than being related to Equity Red Star, I do hope that their other underwriters are more competent but I won't be taking that risk unless I see things change

shit, hope i dont crash, im with flux and underwritten by ERS aswell :(

I like the company name ers I bet that's all you get when you ring them "where's my car?". "errrrrr..."

Funny you should say that, they didn't know where my car was for a week after 'collecting' the vehicle at the beginning of the claim!

Thread bumpage.

THEY FINALLY PAID OUT!!

(after more promised phone calls that never were and more chasing from me to get the to actually do something)

For a brief moment ERS gave me a small sniff of hope when I seemed to be dealing with 'sensible people' but then the claims handler kept changing after that and the original problems came back into light. I understand that they can not update me on the claim all the time but it would at least be nice if they made the phone calls that they said they would!! So many times I would wait more than 48 hours after they promised they would ring (e.g phone call promised on Monday so I would wait till Thursday to chase them up again!)

Not at any point did I feel like a customer with them. I did with the Adrian Flux staff but ERS were terrible, beyond terrible. After the initial period of multiple promised phone calls I never had any hope that they would contact me this time. Now that the claim has been settled I have had a huge sigh of relief and will NEVER be using ERS again in my life. I've had bad service from companies in the financial sector as well as other areas (retail etc) but nothing compares to the complete inability to do something so simple that ERS managed to mess up.

If I took all my previous bad experiences (including the crash itself!) and put them together it still would not be as bad as the terrible service from ERS. Stories always changed, and lies were told and I hate being lied to especially when I can see straight through them!

But I am very glad that the whole ordeal is finally over :)

In fairness to Flux, Ive just gone through the same thing with ERS. Missu was stationery at a roundabout and got rear end shunted, fortunately Ive played this game before so had quotes and a preferred garage sorted within 48 hours, everything looked to be going smoothly ....... had to pay the excess out of my own pocket with a promise of then sending it back within 2 weeks.

It actually took me 10 months to get the £250 back, after various claims that we werent insured with ERS, that they had never even heard of us, then that they werent dealing with the claim, then that they didnt have any record of the claim ....... pretty much every lame excuse in the book. They also stitched me on a salvage buyback a couple of years ago, initially telling me it would be 10%, then deciding after Id accepted it that it would actually be 20% and Im sure Ive had to threaten them to get stuff like cover notes and proof of no claims.

ERS are also the reason that no-one can get trade insurance this year, as their incredibly underpriced product last year has killed the trade market dead - my insurance was more restriced this year but went up by about 50% :rolleyes:

Sorry to hear about all of this bad luck, I've been with Flux for about 3 or 4 years now. I do remember at one point being with ERS but thankfully never having to make a claim.

My renewal with Flux is up at the end of this month, shall make a point to avoid ERS like a fat kid avoids salad!

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Originally Posted by docwra

In fairness to Flux, Ive just gone through the same thing with ERS. Missu was stationery at a roundabout and got rear end shunted, fortunately Ive played this game before so had quotes and a preferred garage sorted within 48 hours, everything looked to be going smoothly ....... had to pay the excess out of my own pocket with a promise of then sending it back within 2 weeks.

It actually took me 10 months to get the £250 back, after various claims that we werent insured with ERS, that they had never even heard of us, then that they werent dealing with the claim, then that they didnt have any record of the claim ....... pretty much every lame excuse in the book. They also stitched me on a salvage buyback a couple of years ago, initially telling me it would be 10%, then deciding after Id accepted it that it would actually be 20% and Im sure Ive had to threaten them to get stuff like cover notes and proof of no claims.

ERS are also the reason that no-one can get trade insurance this year, as their incredibly underpriced product last year has killed the trade market dead - my insurance was more restriced this year but went up by about 50% :rolleyes:

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In a wierd way that has cheered me up slightly knowing that I'm not the only one who had issues with them.

One of the lines they used were 'this is a specialist vehicle' - of course it is.... you underwirte insurance for a specialist broker! They have no idea about modified vehicles and I really dread to think what they are like with normal/standard vehicles!

My Evo insurance will certainly not be going through ERS - even if it was a fair few hundred quid cheaper as I don't want to take that risk! I can't slate the Flux service as they have always been top notch for me :thumbs:

Ive recently brought my first 200 s14, love it i must say.

Befor this i had a w reg ek4 civic which i was paying £680 fully comp with all mods declaired and PNC aswell. This was insured through flux with equity red star and it was my second year with being with them,
now come the slightly laughable part

I got rid of my civic and got my 200 (compleatly standard), so called flux to tell them about the change of car and they told me that the wouldnt be able to insure me on the same policy that i had for my civic, which i thought ok fair enough. so they said they would cancel that policy and start me a new one. So gave all the details and the best quote they could come up with was though a company called saber who wanted £3800, hearing this i just chuckled and politly said no thank youi dont bother.

Any way i managed to get it down to £640 with churchill :-) happy with that one.

Then called equity red star back to cancel my civic policy which i knew that i had to pay a fee of £25 to do this and then decided to tell me that i had to pay £148 in total to cancel.

Now i dont no bout any one else but i think that this is compleat daylight robbery, i just told them that i would not be payin any more then the £25 fee first stated.

Has anyone else had any problems like this or is it just me?

Did you pay for the policy in full or monthly? If monthly, it often costs alot more to cancel the policy.

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Originally Posted by daz_s13

Did you pay for the policy in full or monthly? If monthly, it often costs alot more to cancel the policy.

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Yep, your agreement is actually with a credit company and not the insurance company, they charge an early payment fee. Another thing the insurance companies get a kicking for that isnt their fault.