About 2 months ago, my vehicle was parked in the designated parking area of a veterinary clinic in Midrand. A security guard working for a company providing reaction services, seemingly responded to a call-out, and reversed into my parked vehicle.

All the necessary paperwork was completed – a report detailing what happened according to myself as well as the security guard, a police report with a case number, and I have copies of it all, which also indicates that the security guard is at fault, by his own confession.

After a week, nothing has happened, so I have decided to contact the company, and follow up what is happening. Some reaction from the powers that be at the company, then silence again. I contact them again, and this time, finally, their insurance company called me, and requested information from me, which I started to gather.

Upon getting the three (3) quotes that their insurance company requested of me, all the panel beaters responded that they are not willing to deal with third party claims, due to reasons ranging from the time it takes to settle third party insurance claims to risks related to quoting on repairs that they did not investigate properly, due to not stripping the vehicle for said types of claims.

Finally, I have given up getting quotes for third party insurance claims, and decided to investigate claiming through my own insurance. I have phoned my insurance company, and of course, this is possible and all, but I will have an excess of R 1500.00 and a premium increase of R 80.00 per month for about 12 months.

I felt that since this incident is not my fault, but the guard’s fault (to his own guilt admission), I should not be held responsible for paying this excess and insurance premium increase, which amounts to a total of about R 2500.00. Of course, this is not a huge amount, but for me, it is a matter of principle.

I have therefore contacted their “big boss” that I wish to claim through my own insurance, and that I would claim only my excess and premium increase from them, but has as of yet received no response from them – it’s been over a week.

Oh, by the way, this “big boss” incidently also made a comment “Is this our fault? If not, tell him to fly a kite!” which, of course, was probably not be supposed to have been included in the correspondence that I have received, but unfortunately for them, it was.

Now – I have just about had it with this situation, so, I am thinking of naming and shaming them on all my blogs, Twitter as well as Facebook. I am running 7 blogs, some of them getting over 2000 visits a day in South Africa alone, so maybe naming and shaming is not such a bad idea.

There are many cases of where “the little guy” kicked the backside of “the big guy”. Soon, I will attempt that…. I just thought I’d be fair and allow them one more chance to rectify this situation before actually posting an update to this post that provide the details of this company.