So this happened....

They're still arguing about liability. The HGV driver told me he had dash cam footage so you'd think it would be straightforward enough to determine.

 

Coming up to 7 months since the accident and the car still isn't right. The flagship Toyota branch here in Belgium (Anderlecht) has had the car for about 3 of those 7 months at various times, but they still haven't managed to put it back into pre-crash condition as my insurance policy entitles me to.

The Toyota branch have been absolutely useless and it's really put me off the brand. They have lied to me on two occasions, arranged appointments only for the staff member in question to go home before we got to the branch (and we weren't late). They fitted the fog lights so badly that I could tell just by looking that they weren't correct. They scratched the steering wheel slightly and laughed in my face when I asked them to replace it - "oh your insurer wouldn't authorise that" - they tried to 'polish' it right but failed miserably.

When they first gave me the car back after €10k worth of repairs, I could tell immediately that something major was still quite wrong. The car produced various scraping noises, mostly coming from the front-left wheel, and when I challenged them about it, they tried to tell me the noises were normal for a car with low-profile tyres. I'm no car expert but I'm not an idiot either. I stood in the manager's office and insisted that they sort it out, and he eventually agreed to send a mechanic out to test drive the car and he, like me, immediately heard the noises. They refused to do anything about it immediately which left me no choice but to go on a trip to the Swiss Alps in a car that we all knew wasn't really up to it.

The car performed admirably to be fair, though there's nothing like the anxiety you feel when you don't quite trust the car you're driving down a steep mountain pass with a sheer drop on either side.

The extra repairs necessary were so major they had to put the car through a technical control with the Belgian authorities to ensure they'd done it correctly. They tried to tell me that they knew all along that the work was needed but that our insurer had initially asked them not to do it. They had no answer when I asked why they spent so much effort trying to tell me the noises were normal.

They also tried to charge me a fee when the courtesy car they gave me was vandalised on the street, a fee not mentioned in any contract I signed with them, not to mention that had they repaired my car correctly the first time around, I wouldn't have had the courtesy car. They only gave me my car keys when I threatened to call the police and report a theft.

This is the flagship branch in Belgium I'm talking about here, and it's owned and operated by Toyota Europe themselves.

A few weeks ago I told my insurer that I wasn't prepared to wait any longer and that I wanted the car replacing. They basically told me "no chance" because the 'expert' has reported that the car is fully repaired. This is the same expert that has twice said the car was 'as new' only to then accept that further work was necessary.

The expert visited my home a couple of weeks ago and agreed to propose new work on the car. I can see this ending up in the courts.

 

Thanks for the suggestion but it doesn't apply. It would if the car was defective but not where those defects are the result of an accident. There are various EU-wide regulations regarding insurance policies and contracts in general, but unlike retailers, the insurance industry is incredibly well insulated from anything short of court action. For the most part insurance companies remain self-policing. They rely on 'arms-length' experts who give the illusion of being independent but whose livelihood is reliant on the insurance companies giving them work.