J C.

Terrible service from Hastings after making a claim on my car insurance.

Everything that could go wrong, went wrong, due to Hastings' terrible and non-existent communication with me. Do not use Hastings Direct as your car insurer, as they will be useless when you need them the most.

Straight after my car accident, I was on hold for over an hour trying to speak to someone and request roadside recovery. Eventually, I got through and was told the RAC wouldn't be able to complete a roadside recovery for another 5 HOURS…in the meantime I was stranded in the middle of a very busy road until the police came to recover me and my vehicle.

After the accident, I was never clear on where I was in the process of my claim, and every time I phoned up, I had to re-explain everything to them, as if none of my claim history was in their system.
They seemed to be doing nothing to move my claim forward, even after I was informed the recovery yard which had my car was going to destroy it if Hastings did not collect it after 14 days.

After my 7th call with Hastings, it turned out they didn't even have the correct location of the recovery yard my car was taken to. Even though I had told them multiple times over the phone AND in SEVERAL emails.

I was not given a courtesy car after requesting it, which is included in my policy. I had to phone 3 separate times until they hired a courtesy car through Enterprise, but then cancelled the car hire after only a few days. When I phoned Hastings to find out why, they had no record of hiring a car for me in the first place! Once they found the record of this, they extended the hire which was great of them…but then cancelled it a few days later again, once my car had been deemed a write off – according to their "policy", once your car is written off, they take away the hire car. So I was stuck with no car and no payout from Hastings to buy another one.

Customers have the right to know that you will not be dealing with Hastings for the most part – they will outsource EVERYTHING to Vizion Network…look up their reviews and see for yourself how terrible they are. But Hastings simply do not care about the service offered with this "trusted partner" of theirs.

I was told someone would be in touch within 2 working days to tell me my car's valuation for the payout – someone did phone me…but to tell me because the car had a personalised plate, they couldn't value it themselves and it would have to be sent to engineers to value it. So apparently for the 20+ days my claim was ongoing, NOBODY thought the personalised plate might be an issue. So I was having to wait another WEEK to hear their valuation.

The whole experience felt like this was Hastings Direct's first time dealing with a claim, and no one had any idea what to do. Their internal communication was non-existent, their communication to me was non-existent.

I had to be the one manging the whole thing and moving everything forward as they had zero communication or updates.

I felt like I had to explain to Hastings the amount of stress this was causing me just to get an update on my claim. Everyone I spoke to was very robotic, and just repeating the same thing to me, giving me no updates at all, and transferring me from department to department.

Do not use Hastings Direct as your car insurer, as they will be useless when you need them the most.