Getting this off my chest

It is that time of the year again. Road tax renewal. You cannot renew road tax without sending your vehicle for road worthiness inspection. Also, you can't renew road tax without renewing motor insurance. I am currently insured under NTUC as it was the cheapest available at the time we purchased the car (my being a woman meant a few hundred dollars more in premium). But I have promised myself to switch insurance companies. I have told myself: NEVER AGAIN.

For those of you who have heard my grouses on NTUC motor insurance before, don't say you have not been warned: this is going to get repetitive.

First of all, what the heck is IDAC all about? I think it benefits the consumer not at all. NTUC's procedure is this: if you get into an accident, send your car to an IDAC center where they will inspect the damages, key it into their central computer system which is then sent to/ accessible by the approved workshops. If the workshops are interested in making the repairs, they have to bid for it. The workshop with the lowest bid gets the job. Sounds good. For NTUC that is. It is not incredible or incredulous to suggest that the workshop which makes the lowest bid, would, by pure necessity, have to cut costs in order to make enough profit to justify the job. So one guess on who loses out in the end.

On top of that, the whole process is so much more hassle-some than just sending your car to the approved workshop for repairs and getting it back once it is done.

My personal experience with the idiotic workings of the system was some 3 years back when they first implemented the system. My parents had gotten into an accident in their old Proton Wira. It was a head-on collision. The other car had sped around a bend and crashed into my dad's car. Dad's car, being a Wira, was seriously damaged. My dad suffered a whiplash from the accident and had to be warded a few days.

My mom called me to get the car. My parents were then sent to the hospital in an ambulance. I think some of you would remember that day.

I was at a loss as to what to do. I finally got a tow truck to tow the car away to a workshop. I found out later that night that my dad had recently switched to NTUC insurance. That means I had to send the car to IDAC. After arranging for the car to be towed to IDAC the next morning, I went to the IDAC centre to make a report.

The person at the IDAC center asked me whether I was the driver at the time of the accident. I said no, the driver is still in hospital, I wanted to make the report on his behalf. They told me there was no way the system would allow a 3rd party to make a report on behalf of the driver. What do you mean? I asked, What if the driver had died in the accident? What a stupid system!

I remember being frustrated and agitated. I was still worried about my dad's condition. I did not know at that time whether he was going to be alright (when we left him the night before, he was still in a lot of pain and unable to move). I just wanted to settle the car once and for all and the staff there were insisting they cannot do anything about the system, there was no way they can help me. I have to wait until my dad can come make the report. What if he has to stay in the hospital a long time? Does that mean the car does not get repaired in the meantime? No satisfactory answer.

I remember literally entering into a screaming and shouting match with one of the girls there. Iryan was there, and I think that was the first time he witnessed his then wife-to-be as a screaming banshee! (Come to think of it, it's a wonder he did not run off in the opposite direction. I can honestly admit that that was one of my worst displays of outburst of temper in a public place.)

Finally one of the guys managed to try to churn out some kind of report but he told me that my dad would have to come down to sign the report after he is discharged. When my dad was finally well enough to make the trip down which was about 1 to 2 weeks later (and in the meanwhile the car was idling away with nothing done) they threw away the report that I had given (it was never processed in the system), and churned out a new report which he signed. What a waste of time (and vocal chords)!

Now you know why I have sworned off NTUC motor insurance for good!

So as not to leave the story hanging, none of the approved workshops wanted to bid for the repairs on the Wira. It was declared a total loss, which was not acceptable to us, as this would mean we would have to cough up some $5K to pay off the finance company. By then , it was about 3 to 4 weeks after the accident. I managed to contact a workshop who was willing to do the repairs. So we filed a third party claim instead (the other driver's insurance company also happened to be NTUC).

The workshop repaired the car and bore all the costs first pending the resolution of the litigation suit (yes the case went to court). The car was repaired in about 3 weeks, and in the meantime, they gave us a replacement car for our convenience. My dad sold the Wira last year. Sometime late last year, he had to attend court to give evidence during the assessment of damages stage. He said he was "grilled" pretty badly by NTUC's lawyers. I heard that the suit was finally resolved only recently.

I was really upset when I read in the news that NTUC was going to take a hard stand against 3rd party claimants (especially blacklisted workshops). I do not know whether the workshop we went to was blacklisted (though I suspect that it was, which was probably why we had such a hard time making the claim). From my point of view, you push me into resorting to the only acceptable course of action (after several delays and heartaches), and now you are slapping me around after pushing me down. I am just glad the whole episode is finally over.