Another long story finished recently. Crooks form Alpha-insurance were trying to get extra money. But choose a wrong target.
It all begins in 2018…
Car accident
The story began at nearby mall, on parking area when two German cars met with each other. It’s hard to see on photo, but Golf and Polo have small scratches as a result of a touch,
However we decided to follow the rules and were waited for a Golf owner for some time. After she appeared we filled Euro protocol. This story happened on Oct 9, 2018. We had five days to notify insurance company bout the accident. So, on Oct 12 I took the papers to Alpha-insurance office. Everything went smoothly and they took the papers, put a stamp with confirmation on my copies and I put copies in car’s glove box and forgot about it.
Out of the blue – Alpha claims
You can imagine my surprise, when my wife received a notification couple months ago, that Alpha insurance went to a Court and claims 23 thousands rubles because we failed to notify them about car accident two and a half years ago!
I went to a car and realized that I trashed my copies long ago and have just a words to proof my arguments. I was very upset and decided to pay the money. But afterwards I googled about another case and found out that some companies do it on purpose. They are waiting for two and a half years hoping that people would lost their documents and then go to court. That made me angry and I decided to fight back.
Lawyers – swindlers
At first I decided to visit a lawyer. I have this package from VTB bank with various free services and called them to make an appointment. VTB sent me to AutoLawyer company. Later I found out that they have free consultations on their own and VTB gave me no good but advice a horrible company.
During to consultation, Andrey Aleksandrovich promised me 100% chanses to win the case – the first sing of a bad lawyer, claimed that he know some secret and asked 21 thousands for defense.
I said that it’s too much and we agreed he would write our objections for 6 thousands rubles. That’s a lot but Tanya was going to Saratov and I have no time to find a better lawyer. And i didn’t want to do the job myself. So we signed a contract and I started waiting.
To make long story short, they started to do something when I decided to litigate them. After two weeks they send me one page document with multiple mistakes and horrible argumentations. I was so angry that demanded money back and wrote objections by myself during the evening. As a basements for our defense I used Supreme Court definition No44-КГ20-15-К7 No2-677/2019. In it the Court stated that it’s not enough to claim money only based on the fact that insurance company wasn’t notified. They should provide some supporting data that they had suspicions and couldn’t clarify something as a result of our actions.
Moreover, I asked the Court to demand incoming documents journal as a proof that we notified Alpha-insurance properly.
The very same night after I finished with document, the Head of Department called me with excuses. She told that her lawyers confused everything and sent me another version of objections. I decided to keep my document and added in it their point that Alpha-insurance paid not to the owner of damaged car, but to a company that repaired the car. And they thought it’s against the rules.
Alpha defeat
The Court satisfied my request and demanded documents from Alpha-insurance. They, obviously decided not to forge the journal and withdraw all the claims.
As a result we win the case, although spent some money.
Conclusions
- VTB premium services are garbage. They just compiled free services together and claim that it’s a wonderful product. It is not!
- If you want to do something well you need to do it by yourself. I wanted to simplify my life but as a result spent more efforts and money dealing with useless lawyers.
- Alpha is not the only company who uses loopholes in laws to get extra money. But I will never use their products again and will recommend against it. They don’t get my money and they lost some clients, as a result of greed and dishonest behavior.