The Video Ref wrote:
LOL, but not as bad as Andy Good
The compensation culture infuriates me. I was reading something the other week about how the number of road traffic accidents has dropped dramatically, yet the amount of personal injury claims arising out of RTAs has gone through the roof.
You were reading the usual insurance propaganda and misinformation, now officially backed by Call Me Dave and his mate Djanogly that he put in charge of the job, even though he had a mammoth personal interest in looking after the insurers as his family trusts from which he benefits have huge insurance shareholdings.
There isn't a compensation culture. This is official. The government actually went to the mammoth expense of getting someone to do a detailed Report about it and that was the result.
What there is, is a FEAR of compensation culture. Which makes people and companies do frankly silly things, or be scared of doing or permitting perfectly reasonable things, for illogical FEAR of being sued. There is a huge difference.
Of course, nothing the report wrote (or anyone could write) would ever convince the readership of the Daily Mail that we don't have a rampant compensation culture that will ruin everybody within a week, but there you go.
I also don't understand this business about personal injury claims "going through the roof". I do understand very well that the insurers detect that they have their chums in the Tory government well on-side at the moment, and are filling their mercenary boots, but the (rather obvious) point is that it doesn't matter how many claims are MADE, the question is how many are PAID. If a claim is valid, then pay it, if there are lots that you pay, then stop whinging - you're an insurance company so that's what you're for.
If any given claim is NOT valid - then DON'T PAY IT!! But the rather clever tactic is currently to claim they've paid all these claims but which should never have been paid in the first place. Which is both utterly disingenuous, and as close to bollox as makes no difference.
I would fully accept that many people now do try it on in the case of specifically car crash claims, but that is not a "compensation culture", quite the reverse, it is just a single, specific issue which the insurers have themselves encouraged. How? Loads of ways. Why? Because they were seduced by sheer greed and saw an opportunity to make tens of millions of pounds by trousering £500-£700 a pop referral fees for hundreds of thousands of these claims, which they are now whingeing (with ZERO evidence) weren't genuine.
Also they regularly phone victims of accidents that their policyholders have caused, and offer them £1000 or so to settle on the spot, without any fuss or investigation. How does that tactic help to discourage debatable claims? Whatever, it is such hypocrisy to go out of your way to make such payments and then allege they would all have been bogus claims.
But of course they were probably playing the long game, part of the plan to deliberately exacerbate insurance payouts so they could then whinge how much they were costing.
