TT, My £70 excess payment is only valid with Autoglass (as they have the contract with Elephant). Should I want to get a third party supplier such as VW to fit it I would simply get a £50 payment from Elephant (which would end up costing me a fortune !!)
Like I said in a previous post, that is ILLEGAL. They can NOT do that. They can NOT insist that you only use their "own" supplier or contractor. And they can NOT impose additonal costs on you should you chose your own contractor. Get their highly illegal terms in writing from Elephant, and forward it to:
The Unfair Contracts Terms Unit,
The Office of Fair Trading,
LONDON
(get their full address from the OFT web site)
Because what Elephant are doing is breaching well-established "anti-competition" legislation. They have effectively created a monopoly, and by doing so, can be proven to have either rigged the prices, or rigged the level of service to below the required "expectations".
I would have actually used a VW main stealer to replace the screen, and then issued a County Court Summons against Elephant - and I know I would win. Been there, very nearly got the T-shirt, but in the end, Norwich Union were forced to back down, and didn't fight me when I demanded a genuine screen was used. Liverpool Victoria don't insist you only use AutoGlass, and providing you inform them in advance, are happy to supply an OEM screen without any quibbleing.
Sadly, with insurance, just like everything in this world - you get what you pay for. Cheap insurance from an unreasonable insurer will mean crap service. Elephant, Admiral, Hastings, Budget and the likes should only really be used if you are running around in a 20 year old shed of an Escort or similar. With modern, expensive cars, you should really only use the higher quality insurers.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, on older cars where the windscreen is held by the old skool rubber gasket, then the screen isn't a structural component - so the quality of the glass is not an issue. However, on all modern cars which use "bonded" screens, then the screen IS structural, and forms a part of the entire structure of a vehicle, and will be assesed and evaluated during all of the regulatory crash tests, along with the voluntary tests such as EuroNCAP. This is one area which the Yanks have spot on - they do NOT allow non-genuine screens to be fitted, and you won't see AutoGlass plying their trade in non-regulated screens in the USA.
