The Assessor

Our regular column by a motor insurance claims assessor. No matter what he does, he gets stomped on by either his boss or the repairers. These are his stories.

I’m sure someone’s attached a lunatic magnet to me and it must have been around the time when I took on the job as an assessor. This is the only possible explanation I have for the endless parade of maniacs that sometimes constitute my work. On some days, almost everyone I cross paths with must be under some spell; many of them are amusing, others scary!

There are those of particular foreign backgrounds who insist on doing business the way it’s done in their homeland. Bribery, threats, bargaining for everything, cheating and getting away with it, is their cultural sport. They expect the same here and unfortunately for them it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t stop them trying and when I see it coming, I know exactly how to deal with it.

Then there are the self-absorbed entertainers and those from the law and medical fraternities. Some of them seem to believe that because of their job, the car they own and the suburb they live in, they have the right to dictate to me how I should do my work.

The research junkie who lives in the world of the internet is another head case that’s becoming a regular. More often than not they’re a school teacher and usually armed with a clip board stacked with pages printed from the internet. Evidence from the real world doesn’t count for them. They rely on and believe everything that’s on the internet.

A friend who is a used car wholesaler also knows this type too well. He advises everyone to avoid car auctions during school holidays. He says that they’re full of ignorant teachers holding clipboards who are going to pay too much for their car. It’s the same for us in the insurance business. With experience, these know-alls have generally become a cinch to deal with.

However, all the experience I’ve had with this army of “nutters” counted for zip when it came to dealing with one character recently. He was a greenie but not your stereotypical one – you know, the oddball who wears sandals and socks, chews on mung beans and drives a beaten up Lada Niva. Nope, he was a suit-wearing professor who owned a Citroen diesel.

His car had been sideswiped in a carpark and he had phoned our office for advice as to where he could take it for repair.The first response phone crew found him too difficult to handle as he wanted the green credentials of the repairers that were recommended to him. Co-incidentally it was around the time of the Copenhagen Summit and that might have explained why he was fired up.

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’ve ended up having to take his call. I couldn’t make him understand that smash repairers were not given a rating for environmental friendliness. He wanted to know why the insurance company had nothing for him to refer to, unlike when he’s buying an appliance like a fridge, which has a star rating for being environmentally friendly.

He really tested the limits of customer service when he insisted I find a green repairer for him and meet him there to discuss the repair to the Citroen. Naturally, the client comes first and management insisted that I heed to his demands.

About half an hour before the arranged meeting time I got a call from the repairer. He was furious at me for referring this wacko and his Citroen to his workshop for a quotation. Apparently the client had demanded to be shown all the environmentally friendly equipment the repairer had installed and procedures he had been using there, before he would be allowed to quote on the Citroen.

Knowing this repairer’s temper and the German Shepherd that guards the workshop, I dashed over there as fast as I could. I sent the repairer off and sat the client down to have a friendly talk with him.

He just needed some answers about the “greenness” of the workshop before he’d approve of it being used to repair his car. From his questions he seemed fairly clued up on recycling of water and solvents, waste disposal, waterborne paints and filtration. He also wanted to know how long it would take before the toxins from the paint on his car would disappear. The quality of the repair didn’t even rate a mention!

The problem for me was that I didn’t have all the answers nor the time to go through it all with him. I told him he could take this repairer or leave it, in which case he would need to take up his issues with management of the insurance company.

As I was leaving he made reference to a recent book, “Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living” in which it claims that a medium-sized dog, just like the repairer owned, had a carbon footprint twice that of a four-wheel-drive due to the large quantity of meat it consumes each year. I’d had enough of this madness and bolted to my car.

Don’t be surprised if, in the future, workshops will need a “green” rating.