Avoid Admiral (and companies owned by Albany) at all costs

“Avoid Admiral (and companies owned by Albany) at all costs”

Written on: 18/08/2012

After a no-fault accident when our car was written off, Admiral offered much less than the car was worth. We provided evidence of the value from the garage where we hadfd bought it a year earlier, several adverts from Ford dealers for virtually identical cars (allowing for a likely discount from the screen price) and refused to accept theGlass's Guide valuation.
The policy defines the Market Value as the cost of replacement from the place where you normally buy cars (in our case a Ford main dealer)but they told us that using a main dealer wasn't a valid marketplace for price-comparison.

They even sent details of an accident damaged car located over 200 miles away as a price comparison for the replacement value of our immaculate car. Long discussions (where Admiral changed their story several times) eventually led to us making a Formal Complaint. The Formal Complaint was also mis-handled as it was intercepted by the original Claims team (who were the subject of the complaint) and not passed on to the Formal Complaints team.

We then tried to recover the uninsured lossses from the third party (who has been prosecuted for his part in the accident)using the Legal Expenses cover in our Admiral policy (administered by parent company Albany Assist), but Admiral refused to do this as the third party was also an Admiral customer. How can they take our money for Legal Expenses then refuse to let us use the policy?

The case is currently with the Financial Ombudsman Service.