Adrian Flux - simply avoid

Buying a ‘5 and Insurance advice Insurance Advice
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So I have been absent for a while… the reason is around mid Jan I managed to come off with my car on an icy patch while going to work. I managed to hit the front and back of the car on a crash barrier ona slip road and I was extremely annoyed. But the crash was pretty minor if I’m honest as there wasn’t any chassis damage, but expensive. I wasn’t deterred however because I did have an agreed value policy with Adrian Flux with all modifications declared… or so I thought.

with the agreed value policy, they asked me to send pictures and declare all mods that I had. and we agreed on a value of 11k. on renewal, they send me a 15-page document that on the first page was saying if nothing changed I didn’t need to do anything so I paid the money and I thought nothing more of this…

When I managed to get through to Adrian Flux about the accident they said they wouldn’t honor the agreed value bit because apparently on page 3 I was supposed to send them pictures again… suffice to say nobody rang me that they need these pictures again so yea… lovely.

Adrian Flux is just an agent and the actual insurance is AXA. So when AXA got involved they requested to send the car to Copart. So Copart as being a breaker and salvage company and because they won’t cover the car to its actual value effectively declared my car as cat B beyond economical repair. I then said ok, I’m not going to claim cancel everything and give my car back to me.

Now they won’t give me my car back because they say its a cat B and its not safe to repair. But the only reason is cat B be its because those idiots say its too expensive to repair not that there is extensive damage to the car. A car that is worth to me 16k.

If I knew the insurance wouldn’t cover the agreed value I would never have contacted them and sort the car myself. But that’s the whole reason I have bought an agreed value insurance, not having to worry about this.

SO bottom line. Avoid Adrian Flux…

If I ever get my car back I’m never getting insurance with Adrian Flux again.

Copart engineer report and my reply on their report for your amusement.

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Sorry to read this. Fingers crossed for you that you get your car back and I see you again soon.

It’s ironic that the insurer is AXA because if you insure directly with AXA they will allow exactly zero modifications in my experience.

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A possibility if required:

Though I believe you do have the right to ask for a second opinion from a different engineer/different company, worth ringing Adrian Flux and asking directly since they’d probably have to agree to it.

As an aside, my only experience with AXA was through their breakdown service.
They told us they would honour the policy to get us (and our car with its failed gearbox) to our destination (the breakdown cover type we were paying for).
So we waited on them arriving.
After two hours of waiting, we rang again to be told they’d changed their minds - we’d have been waiting till the cows came home if we hadn’t rung to find out when they were coming.
In the end we had to pay £700 to a recovery firm to get us to our destination (and needless to say dropped breakdown cover off the policy at renewal).

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Copart have probably been shunting the car around on a forklift, that in itself will probably cause more damage.:sleepy:

It seems the norm now and go to method of removing crash damaged cars, Copart or the rivals straight to a compound or breakers yard.

TBH I can why they’ve basically written it off, plenty damage and needs (for the insurance) proper parts for a fix which in there eyes is over and above worth it.

Hope you get it sorted to your satisfaction.:+1:

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Concerning. One of my cars is covered by their service, I think. I’ve not had to claim on an AXA policy but my general experience of insuring directly with AXA and dealing with customer service has been positive.

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And on the flip side, my Dad used Adrian Flux and everything went smoothly enough for him when he had to claim - the only one bad thing that happened was all the companies who got hold of our details and would ring trying to persuade us to sue the others involved for injury/damages for a less than 1mph collision :roll_eyes:

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Sorry to hear about what happened. If you want your car back from copart you’d better act quickly as they treat cars like ■■■■ and bits may be missing before you get a chance to recover it.

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Yes, Copart is a one way street. Confirmed by the driver who drove my poor little Niseko onto his trailer.

I was given the option of retaining my car by the underwriters (Markerstudy), but they insisted I needed to get it fixed and correctly approved roadworthy inside a month!

I bit the bullet and took the easy way out. I managed to haggle top-book payout in Glass’s , which was two grand better than the other two guides they also use.

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You didn’t do this, and yet you appear to think that this is Adrian Flux’s fault? How about personal responsibility? And how about not trying to thrash the reputation of a reputable firm because of your own failings?

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You need to remember, that I have already gone through the valuation and have sent them all the pictures they needed and declared everything. Nothing had changed on renewal so I stopped reading after this… And if there was a requirement for sending pictures again the first page should have never said or mentioned you do not need to contact us

And should they really need pictures why didn’t they ask for them upon renewal and only remembered about those when I placed a claim? And honestly what exactly would the pictures show that was not already declared?

I guess on page 3 they could have also asked that I transfer ownership of my house to them… glad they did jot

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If I get my car back and anything is missing or further damaged they will be sued or go through the financial ombudsman.

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Well check it thoroughly if you do manage to get it back :+1:. Best of luck with it, I’ve no doubt they’d just argue any damages were already in there as they do. All these companies use burden of proof to their advantage.

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Must admit - If I received that letter - like you - I would assume I have nothing to do before renewal if nothing has changed.

Not sure I would go digging through the rest of the docs to find “things to do”

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What’s wrong with agreeing their valuation, getting the payout and getting the car back less a couple of hundred scrap value? That’s what I did when my Mark 1 was rear ended and a value (not structural) right off.

Your modifications are yours but worth little or nothing to anyone else. This way you retain ownership of what you’ve shelled out on. Use the payout for repairs.

That’s a score draw in my book.

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Cat b …
Apparently they can’t give me my car back and it can’t go on the road.

And this was after an idiot in an office deemed the car value and damage remotely by looking at pictures

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Really sorry to hear about your accident, main thing is your okay, hope you get your car back and get it fixed. For some reason long ago I decided the only reason I have insurance is if a third party claims, anything where no one else is involved I’d just not get insurance involved there is so much misunderstanding about what they do and do not cover I really couldn’t be bothered. Sad you found this to be the case the stuff with the renewal just wreaks of the kind of slight of hand I’d expect from a back street trader and does make one wonder just who’s side these people are on.

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I hope you don’t find yourself in the same position. Getting people not to read the T&C has obviously got more sophisticated. This is an obvious ruse by the insurance company given the photos had already been provided.

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I had insurance a few years back for my mk1 where I sent photos to the wrong e-mail (ending in .com instead of .co.uk.) I think it was LV. Around 6 weeks later I received a strongly worded letter that was threatening they would cancel my insurance! Thankfully I managed to sort it in time. But a friendly e-mail reminder would have been much more welcome!
I’m now with Hagerty. Agreed valuation with all mods listed. No photos required.

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My brother had his FTO insured through Adrian Flux. His wife had a crash, and the car was recovered. The main damage was to the headlights and the car was driveable. Initially, they wrote the car off, due to the high price of the headlights (mint FTO, 1st UK owner, only in UK less than 18 months). And the settlement was derisory. So my brother asked for the car back. No, couldn’t do that, as it had already been sold off. He regarded this as little more than theft, and got the Ombudsman involved. After toing and throwing, he finally got a fair settlement price.

I was also with Adrian Flux. One icey march, when exiting a village, one of the wheels caught a frozen manhole cover, and flipped the car around into a grass bank. The bumper was smashed in and the wings bent back a little. The car was drove fine… I got home and started the claims process. Originally, Adrian Flux wanted me to take the car to a local repairer for assessment. I asked if I could take it to my preferred repairer, because just the previous year, I had car resprayed there (at this point, I was thinking, because of the age of the car, and Mk1 vales at the time weren’t great, it was going to be a write off, but I could buy the car back). AF said fine, but I wouldn’t get a courtesy car; fine, I already had a spare car. I patched up the front with gaffer tape, put back on the number plate, and the car looked presentable, and drove it the 100+ miles to Nuneaton without incident.

Nuneaton quickly said bumper and fittings and a pair of wings, probably £2000 total, on a car that I thought at the time would struggle to £2500. But we had a discussion at the time; its a Montego Blue S-Special II, with factory BBS, not that many in the country… Then we awaited the assessor. And waited. And waited. After 3 weeks, I decided to go straight to the insurance company themselves (can’t remember who it was). And the bombshell; they had gotten no notification from Adrian Flux that my car had even been in an accident. They quickly called the coachworks, something was discussed, and the to repairer was amazed that the insurance company gave the go ahead for work to proceed. I supposed the repairer, because he knew the car, gave them an accurate picture of the condition of the car pre-accident, and that all helped.

Yeah, so I am no longer with Adrian Flux. I tend to be rather suspicious of agreed value policies, especially modern cars. I don’t think they are worth the paper they are written on. On a 1996 S-Special 2, with 270k kms and having been put through a ringer (crash, welded sills), I don’t think it its worth it, as how would such a car be valued?

With Footman James now; on a limited miles policy, the quotes are fair, plus maybe if I ever had another claim, they would treat me right, in the way, when they were Aon, they more than treated me right when SAZ9826 was stolen and torched back in 2000.

But its a lottery; you never know how good an insurance company is except if you are ever unfortunate enough to have to make a claim.

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I suggest you go the Financial Ombudsman route…or at least appear to do so from the insurance companies perspective.

Several decades ago I worked in motor insurance. Back then no insurance company wanted to get involved with the Insurance Ombudsman, as it was then.

The ombudsman’s investigation process is very thorough, and will tie up one of the insurance companies underwriters for quite some time… and time is money. At the end of the process, there was also the chance they would lose. So financially, it wasn’t a good route to go down for any insurance company.

So once it looks like the Ombudsman will be involved, most insurance companies cave and will settle the claim favourably. Or at least that’s how it was in my day.

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