An Australian woman says she was forced to provide incredible dashcam footage to her insurance provider to prove her daughter was not at fault when her car was hit while sitting stationary in traffic.
Lifelong NRMA customer Jenny told Ben Fordham on 2GB she lodged an insurance claim after the front of her car was clipped in an accident while her daughter, an off-duty police officer, was behind the wheel on July 9 on their way back from a snow trip.
She claims an insurance representative said her daughter was at fault for the crash which damaged their vehicle, meaning she would have to pay the excess.
“When we initially made the claim over the phone she kept referring to it as our car hitting another car, I kept saying to them, ‘No, that’s not correct’,” she told Ben Fordham Live on 2GB.
“She was actually stationary in the outside lane, traffic has built up on Hume Highway, she has basically come to a full stop.
“A car was coming up the inside and was clipped by a car that tried to come into that lane.
“That caused it to roll approximately eight times and it rolled across the front of our car.”
NRMA later cleared Jenny’s daughter of blame after she took dashcam footage to an in-person NRMA office proving her innocence – however, the issue still wasn’t resolved.
Nearly a month later, on August 1, the smash repair company informed Jenny that NRMA had denied their insurance claim to fix the paint blend on the vehicle.
“They (didn’t) want to blend the paint to the surrounding panels, (but) according to the paint repair guidelines, if a panel’s got to be replaced, then the paint has to be blended to the surrounding areas,” she said.
“One of the doors had to be replaced and the front (panel), but the NRMA wouldn’t allow that to happen.”
The car is close to brand new and was purchased in May for $61,000.
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Jenny decided to submit a claim with the driver at fault’s insurance company to fix the paint job.
The claim was accepted within a matter of days.
“It’s been two months of a nightmare,” she said.
“The at-fault insurance company rang me and confirmed all the details … (it was) the identical claim to what we put through to the NRMA.”
The car is still not ready two months after the initial claim was made.
In a statement to 9news.com.au, NRMA said it had apologised to Jenny over the incident.
“We understand this accident was a traumatic experience for our customer, her daughter, and their family,” it said.
“When a customer has been in an accident our priority is ensuring that they’re safe and that we make their claims experience as easy as possible.”
“We’ve spoken with our customer today to apologise directly for their experience.
“We will always review dash cam footage to help determine who is at fault in an accident and agree this should have been resolved as soon as they had lodged their claim.
“We will also take the appropriate steps with the relevant teams to do everything we can to prevent a similar issue happening in the future.”
