My Experience after an accident

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#1

So my luck hasn’t been great recently. First I ran out of battery then I’ve had an accident in my beloved Q4. Unfortunately since then things have not gone smoothly and I’ve not been happy with what has happened so I wanted to document it here:

  • Accident was on Monday evening. The car was unfortunately underivable afterwards. I phoned the insurance company to inform them and they arranged recovery for the car to the recovery vehicles storage area. The recovery company dropped me at home (it was quite close by). It was out of hours so the insurance company said they can’t arrange a courtesy or hire car for me

  • I called next day to arrange a courtesy car. FMG (the repair company for the insurance company) didn’t have any. The insurance company said there was no provision in the policy for an courtesy car other than if the repair partner had one available.

  • I called ONTO about this. I didn’t see this being a quick repair and needed transport. ONTO were quite swift in authorising a replacement car for me. Unfortunately there were no Q4s available but there was a Kona ultimate. Which was ideal as I was thinking of swapping to a Kona anyway.

  • After a few emails customer service confirmed that a red Kona has been confirmed with the relevant team for delivery on Monday 20th and I will hear back within 48 hours to confirm this.

  • 48 hours past and I didn’t hear back. So I went on Live chat about it and it appears the booking was never made. And to add insult to injury there are no Kona’s left now.

  • I asked to be swapped into an ID4 as I can see them available on the website. But these are not available on their side and if I book on the website then this will be cancelled.

  • I then spent an hour on the phone to discuss what has happened and why it has happened. Nobody had any reason for the Kona not being booked for me other than someone else has booked it and now it isn’t available. It’s quite disappointing as if I didn’t contact ONTO myself then I would have just been waiting on Monday for a car that was never coming.

In the end I’ve had to settle for a Megane. I don’t know when it’s coming. The earliest they say is Friday but they will try and expedite it. Being without a car for this amount of time hasn’t been easy and to have to go a further almost week without the car just isn’t good at all. On top of all that my username is irrelevant now!

Going to tag @Amy_at_Onto as I understand she deals with customer service issues.

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#2

You can use taxis etc and onto will cover cost

#3

First off the Megane is an excellent vehicle. Mine was sadly in an accident on Wednesday, also un-driveable.

Your experience is quite similar to mine. I’ll list a few points below but there are some serious deficiencies in the Onto processes when you have an accident and are left without transport

  • The new insurance company much worse than Zurich. You call up and speak directly to the underwriter, they know nothing. The range of questions they want from you at the roadside before even arranging recovery is wild (emails of the other party, national insurance number really?!). It took me 45 minutes to just get recovery booked, all this time stood at the roadside. When will it come? Nobody knows, not the underwriters problem.
  • As you have said there’s zero provision in the Onto policy to provide alternative transport. Onto expect the insurance/FMG to supply a vehicle. In my case I’m 400+ miles from home and FMG just laughed when I said I need a one-way rental home.
  • An accident is stressful. Onto seem to not have the ability internally to authorise anything post-accident, again expecting the insurance. It’s you might get reimbursed for onward travel. I’ve since been told this is a definite, this should be communicated clearly to all at Onto so customers aren’t left abandoned.

This brings me on to the biggest issue was Onto more or less abandoning me. Ideally in situations like this the customer should call Onto, first off how is everyone doing. Then immediately arranging replacement travel or communicating to the customer what can be reimbursed and ensuring the customer can get home safely.

I’ve spoken to some fantastic people at Onto the last few days but it feels like the processes and system just don’t allow for them to properly help customers. The end result for me with all this internal Onto paralysis is that I’ve lost all confidence in Onto and sadly ended my Onto journey after more than 2 years.

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#4

I’m sorry to hear that and I hope you were ok after the accident.

I am also planning to leave ONTO as soon as my work sort out their salary sacrifice scheme but unfortunately that could take some time and then additional time for them to actually deliver the car. The price increases and the mileage decreases don’t make it a good option for me anymore. I was keen on signing up with mocean for the IONIQ 5 but the delivery costs to Scotland would be crazy.

My experience with ONTO has been fine until something goes wrong or something different happens. The two times I’ve had trouble is when I did a swap from Kona to Q4 and then now with the accident.

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#5

I was told that they will cover reasonable costs for public transport. A taxi wasn’t mentioned and would be very costly for ONTO due to the distances I cover.

#6

That is bizarre. The most I would expect is as below…

Exchange motoring details

  • Share your name and address with everyone involved if the accident caused damage or injury – the law says you must do this.
  • Swap insurance information and details with the other driver(s).
  • Take down details of any other passengers and witnesses to the accident.
  • Try to find out if the other driver is the registered owner of the vehicle, if they are not, find out who the owner is and get that information too (for instance it might be a company car).
  • If a foreign lorry is involved, get the numbers on both the lorry and its trailer, sometimes they are different. Its also a good idea to get the name of the company if its painted on the lorry.
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#7

Arranging recovery was fine for me and actually very quick. The recovery vehicle arrived within 20 minutes.

I felt whoever I spoke to on the insurance side was a bit inexperienced. Sounded like they were working from home for the phone call. But these are just details.

#8

From accident to recovery arrival was over 3 hours. It’s the north of Scotland so I wasn’t expecting it to be rapid. Funnily it was recovered to somewhere over an hours drive away, the body shop allocated to the repair is a short 2 minute drive from the accident.

I will ask the underwriter why they’re asking for some of the info they have.

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#9

Good Morning, I’m sorry to hear about the issues you have been having I am currently looking into everything for you.

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#10

Thanks for your phone call Amy. You were very helpful.

Hopefully this can all be closed out once the new car comes some time this week!

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#11

So delivery day of the mighty Megane is today. Not had an SMS to say driver is on his way but the app has been updated. Not hopeful as I am a fair distance for delivery.

Here is to hoping!

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#12

Still got a good half a day left, so maybe late as Friday traffic is always manic.
Trust it all goes to plan.

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#13

So the car disappeared from the App but has now come back again and is tracking to Gretna. So hopefully it will come today.

I did however get a random charge of £187 which I will have to chase up on :confused:

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#14

Balancing payment for part-month??? :thinking::man_shrugging:

#15

No that was taken when the ‘swap’ was booked. If anything onto owe me money because the q4 was only 2 days into a new month. Will sort it out though.

Megane has arrived and first impressions are very good. It’s brand new with 250 miles on it. It’s a shame it stinks of cigarette smoke though. I know that’s not onto’s fault as they use a third party but a bit of a shame.

Will leave the windows open if it dries up I guess.

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#16

Worth letting Onto know as they might help with ‘fumigation’, well odour neutralisation.
Logistics drivers should never smoke in any car, however those that do smoke generally stink of smoke anyway, so might be ‘secondary’ stench. Shame it’s spoilt the new car smell already before you even got it.

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#17

Just to close this all out. Amy was excellent and very helpful. She processed the refund for the £187 without me asking other than mentioning it here.

Just waiting for the invoices so I can claim back the excess from I4CH.

The Megane is a great car. I do miss the charging speed and range from the q4 but everything else is as good or better in the Megane (so far)

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#18

@Q4_addict Random tip for you today!

So, I also have a Megane - If you use the google built in to the car, set your destination to a charge (has to be the charger, not a building, road etc) and proceed to drive there, the vehicle will pre-condition the battery.

I often pull around 45-50kw charging on my local instavolt, I did the above and managed to cap out at 85kw - Could just be me thinking it works, however, if you have a fair distance to the charger it works a treat!

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#19

Very helpful thank you. Have you found that the car alarm randomly goes off on the car?

Also do you know how to reset the trip on it :o

#20

@Q4_addict Can’t say I’ve had any issue with the alarm going off, have you reported this at all?

Nope, I need to actively try and reset the trip data - Although, I find it kind of useful not to, as I can work out my average mileage from the total which gives me an idea of mileage expectation and the need of a bolt-on!

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