Auto insurance in Thailand ... a waste of time

[heartofmidlothian]

Having lived in Hua Hin for 20 years and have claimed 3 times for damage done to my car while I have been parked. Never had any problems and always found the insurance companies easy to deal with. Depending on the value of your car, have always found the cost to be between 15 000 and 25 000 baht per year and well worth it. Doesn't matter how careful you are, somebody will hit your car while you are stationary. 2 years ago we got hit in the back bumper twice within 24 hours while in car parks. Both people did a runner without leaving a note but we did find out who the 2nd person was.

[StevePIraq]

We have also had someone damage our car three times. Each time an insurance rep visited our home, inspected, gave us a slip and told us to take it a specific repair shop. No problem any time, never any suggestion the damage was self caused or we should be responsible in anyway.

In my opinion we could not get such good service anywhere else.

[Billy Joe I]

Insurance here is a pot luck!
I recently had a uninsured blow on a crapped out moped drive into the side of my car as he was cutting a corner. By the time he hit me I was stopped and not even at the junction fully. Of course as is the practice here, I called my insurance who promptly (About an hour) sent out their assessor. Now this is AXA, who I thought was a respectable global insurer.. (Yes I know, you can't have the words 'respectable' and 'Insurer' together!!)
When the fella turned up he went straight to the Thai man who had run in to me and talked to him for about 5 minutes resulting in plenty of laughter and noise. When he was done there he came over and said 'You must take care for motor bike here in Thailand, now you pay!' Even with pictures showing that anywhere else I would have been in the right, the guy wasn't interested. I guess this is just another case of TIT and I'm the wrong colour.
The car has not been repaired yet but we'll see how that goes and afterwards I'll be complaining to AXA about their service. BTW, my excess is 5k.

Personally its changed the way I look at insurance in Thailand. I'll still be buying but I will go for the cheapest quote and not be influenced by any names I'm familiar. I don't believe that you'll get fair, even from your own insurance company, unless the other party is also foreign!

[heartofmidlothian]

If this is the way AXA treat you then dump them. My wife always buys insurance with the well known Thai insurance companies and my experiences are the same as StevePIraq.

[Billy Joe I]

If this is the way AXA treat you then dump them.

When the current term is up, I guarantee AXA will have not a satang more of my business. Here and elsewhere, ever again!

[almirante82]

I'm in need of some advice.

I've not actually seen the car as i'm currently at work but have seen the photos and it looks like our car is wrecked. This happened about 3 weeks ago on Petchkasem road when a driver in a car fell asleep at the wheel and crossed into on-coming traffic. Luckily the wife and kid were unhurt albeit shaken.

It has transpired that the driver of the other car had no insurance. We have 1st class insurance.

The police have been involved but no progress has been made with the repair to our car so far.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation and how was it resolved? Will our insurance company have to pay for our car?

[buksida]

When it happened to us our own insurance had to pay.

The asshole who hit us with none claimed poverty, though he was driving around in a new Nissan.

The police were no help whatsoever, their job was just to get the debris off the road.

[HHCanuck]

About 4 years ago a car rolled down the parking lot and hit my SUV in the front. The owner had no insurance but my insurance covered it. They had a different deductible if you wanted dealer repair or after market. I think we had to pay 500 Baht more and we took it to Toyota to get repaired. Mind you there wasn't much damage mostly plastics, lights and radiator.

[Name Taken]

Notice - this is a rant so dismiss any seriousness from this post.

I have always thought that the general premise behind shelling out for fully comprehensive auto insurance is that your vehicle and anything else is covered should you have an accident and you get a better service than the bare bones third party legal cover.

Wrong.

The term 'cover' in Thailand is extremely loose indeed and the whole system seems orchestrated for a few people to make a bit of money and the poor bastard with the damaged wagon to suffer.

Now this is twice that some pelican has driven into our car though we should be grateful this time that he actually had level one insurance unlike the first one that didn't have any. Insurance companies here will only work with 'select' garages and very few of them are in Hua Hin. Firstly these select garages have such a queue of busted wagons to fix that the wait is longer than that in a Thai airport during a protest.

So its a drive to South Butte Phuk to locate the said garage. When they do finally take a look at your wagon they kindly tell you that they do not order genuine parts as they are too expensive ... so cheap copies it is then. Secondly they tell you that they can't match the body work ... so technicolour dream-car it is then.

Now if the insurance company is paying why can't they order direct from the genuine supplier? Twice the the kickbacks for cheapo parts.

The third kick in the pants is that they want to keep the car for three weeks to do a 4 hour job so that they can charge the insurance company a daily rate. Good news for the garage bad news for my kids who have to walk to school now.

So the result of a problem caused by some other careless twat is a two-tone car with ill-fitting, sub-standard, parts that I'll probably get back in March.

Insurance? Why bother!

TiT

[buksida]

I wrote that in 2009 but I'm pretty sure it still applies today.

[mat]

@Almirante: If you have a First Class insurance, no worries, the insurance company will pay for your damage regardless if the other party is insured or not. The company will try to get it back from the other party, but you will not have anything to do with that.
@Billy Joe: Every insurance company in Thailand works with independed offices that provide the Surveyor service for the insurance companies. So if you call the hotline of the insurance company to report an accident, they will simply look where you are and forward the message to this most nearby independend office. This office will send a surveyor to the spot.
So it is very well possible that you have an accident today with your own car and Mr. X shows up representing AXA, and a day later you have an accident with your wife's car that is insured at i.e. LMG and Mr. X shows up again representing another company.
The job of these surveyors is not a very popular one since they have to go out to accidents 24 hours a day and mostly have to deal with people that are not exactly in a party mood. As a result indeed it happens that sometimes you can get a surveyor that does strange things. Bottomline is that this can happen at any insurance company. It is extremely annoying when you get the blame where you are not at fault at all, but it is better to just accept it and switch company at the next renewal if your premium goes up (less No Claim Discount).

I absolutely don't agree that having a car insurance is useless in Thailand, in general all claims for car insurances run smoothly. Also at AXA. Before you switch to another company, check out the coverage for the Third Party. This is high at AXA but sometimes extremely low at other companies, which can be dangerous.

Matt
www.insureinthailand.com

[Nereus]

Before you switch to another company, check out the coverage for the Third Party.

I have posted about this previously. It is something that is easy to overlook, more so if it is only written in Thai. I have a couple of cars with Viriyah, and thier default amount is 1Million Baht. Write off a 5 Million Baht Benz and you may well spend the rest of youir life paying it off. The increase in the premium is petty cash, I think it is about 100 Baht / Million, but perhaps Mat can post just what it is.
And every year I have to explain to the "staff" in their office what I want, despite it being shown on last years policy!

[Terry]

Yep - I guess insurance is a lottery - but for what it's worth....

When my Accord was 5 months old, I got hit by a piece of 2 inch angle iron that fell off the back of an unsecured load in a pick-up truck.

Needless to say the bar steward never stopped and in fact succeeded in smacking up 3 other cars, one through the windscreen - lucky the guy inside was not hurt.

My car ended up with two nearside door panels and a sill well damaged - I was not happy............

Drove in to Honda the next day, told them what happened. They said that it would be likely that the insurance company might not believe my story as I did not have a police report. Understandable I guess.

Anyway - they said ' As you have first class insurance, just sign the claim form and we will fill it in - let's see'

Got a call two days later confirming that the insurance would pay and that I would be advised when they could fix it (Ordering of new door panels and cill)

One week later they took the car and fixed it in 7 days. You would never believe that it had sustained the damage - a perfect repair.

My insurance is with AXA................

[mat]

Even when in Thai language, the lay out of a policy is the same at every company. In the middle of the page you see 3 columns. The column on the left shows the third party coverage. It shows 3 amounts, the amount in the middle is always 10,000,000 baht. The amount above that shows the coverage for Third Party Bodily Injury/Death. The amount under the 10 M amount shows the Third Party property damage coverage. If you have a good insurance, the amounts stated will show as follows:
2,000,000 (Third Party Bodily Injury/Death)
10,000,000 (Max that will paid out per accident)
5,000,000 (max coverage Third Party Property damage)
Just acceptable will be:
1,000,000
10,000,000
2,500,000
Drive around on a policy that shows lower coverage as the above...well, you are taking a risk that you will end up paying by yourself in a worst case scenario. Claimed amounts by injured persons, or relatives in case of death, are getting higher and higher, also in Thailand.

At some companies indeed it is possible to increase the Third Party coverage. Check this with your agent or broker.
You can also check with us: www.insureinthailand.com