The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Why won’t they pay?

I had an accident on my way to work and my vehicle overturned. The Police charged me with driving without due care. I kept on contacting the insurer throughout the process and yesterday I received a letter of claim rejection citing I broke the law and the cover clause of accident/loss avoidance. They say the vehicle has been rendered beyond repair.

This is a very good example of why you should read every agreement you are asked to sign, BEFORE you sign it. All insurance policies include a number of exclusions, situations when the policy doesn’t cover you. For instance, some household insurance policies won’t cover you for losses if you leave your doors open when you go out.

With vehicle insurance policies there are also often exclusions. For instance, most vehicle insurance policies won’t cover you if you’re charged with drink-driving, or if your vehicle was unroadworthy at the time of the accident. In both of these situations it’s reasonable for the insurance company to say that you might have brought the accident upon yourself.

In your case the insurance company are very clear about what they think. When they rejected your claim they said that you broke one of the clauses of your policy which says that you should “take all reasonable steps and precautions to prevent accidents or losses”. According to the police report you sent me, you overtook a vehicle that was already indicating that it was going to turn right, and you crossed a white line while doing so. Their position is that you brought the accident on yourself and that’s why they say you’re not entitled to a payout.

Your policy says you’re entitled to ask the insurance company’s CEO to review their decision and I suggest you do that. However, I wouldn’t be very optimistic.

Are these jobs real?

Please over the past two weeks have seen a series of ads for jobs for different organisations that look too good to be true. The links look suspect, pay & qualifications unbelievable.

They ask people to type YES or JOB and people are responding. I’m thinking it's a way to steal your details through Facebook. Is it possible it can be looked into to warn people of these ads?

Many thanks for alerting us.

We’ve been warning people about these fake job offer scams for many years. The bad news is that they’re not going away. The good news is that more and more people like you are skeptical, spot the clues and avoid becoming a victim.

The biggest clue is that the jobs they offer are too good to be true, just like you suggest. They advertise amazing jobs in far-flung, exotic places, offering enormous salaries and tremendous benefits such as housing, medical insurance, travel expenses and cars.

The way these scams work is simple. They offer you a job with all those exciting benefits and just before you’re about to get the airline tickets, the advance on your salary, whatever else they’re offered you, the story will change and they’ll tell you that you have to pay them a fee. Sometimes it’s a legal fee, more often it’s for your visa to travel to the country they’ve mentioned, either way it’s a fee in advance for something. That’s why they’re called “advance fee” scams. It’s all about that fee.

You are also correct that very often these online advertisements are used to gather personal details from people that can be used for a range of criminal purposes. The sort of information victims give to these fake recruitment companies can easily be misused. Our personal, ID and passport details, our qualifications can all be used to establish fake identities and then who knows what might happen.

Congratulations to you for being skeptical. Keep spreading the word!