NFU Mutual Car Insurance www.nfumutual.co.uk

We've had our House and car insurance with NFU for 8 years. We went to them because we were tired of dealing with call-centres and were delighted to be able to just pick up the phone and speak immediately to a real person. We also knew that they have a high customer satisfaction rating. It was worth paying above-average premium levels for these factors. However we had never had to make a claim until now!

Unfortunately our car was broken into a couple of months ago by someone forcing the lock. When I rang to start the claim process I was re-directed from the local office to a claims handling call-centre. Not a good start. Throughout the process I have had to deal with this same call-centre in Bristol, hanging on the phone for ages and being given different information by different people. This has all been very frustrating and time-consuming and not what I expected. They have blamed the delays and inefficiences and wrong information on a high volume of workload. I will not be re-newing the policies with NFU.

I decided to change my insurers to a localNFU Mutual on the basis of the Which reccomnendation. What a mistake, possibly if you are someone who is used to discount insurerers with no accountability for service and do not mind speaking to at least 5 different departments for 1 claim then perhaps NFU is for you. I had been used to a broker who was willing and able to advise me on all aspects of the policy. To their credit a couple of NFU staff did say that they were limited in terms of service by the processes they had and that they actively tell clients that they cannot advise them what the right thing to do is ! If you have a lot of time on your hands and would like to manage several people and departments trying to get them to provide the information you require but also have a large phone package to support that then possibly NFU Mutual is for you. I would also advide against trusting Which recommendations when choosing and ask friends who you can trust instead.

RATHER STICK PINS IN MY EYES THAN speak with NFU !!