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news
Whispbar WBT31 3 bike tow bar carrier07.jpgCyclist denied car insurance claim for fitting bike carrier with removable towbar
A cyclist says he was denied a car insurance claim by an insurance company on the grounds of him fitting a removable towbar to the rear of the vehicle for a bike carrier, leaving him with a bill potentially going up to £100,000 along with “stress and anxiety”.
Stewart Crooks told road.cc that he had purchased the Allianz-owned Flow insurance policy via the MoneySuperMarket website. However, when he tried to file a claim after an incident in February this year, he was accused of trying to “deceive” the company for failing to list a towbar as a modification.
“I am at my wit's end in a nine-month dispute with my car insurance company,” Crooks said. “Following a routine vehicle collision, they have refused to honour my insurance at the last minute leaving me with a potential six-figure cost and the incredible stress and anxiety this has caused me and my family.”
He said that when he was applying for a quote, he selected ‘unmodified’, having clicked on the website’s ‘help’ link to determine what the question meant.
MoneySuperMarket states that a modification means a “change from the manufacturer’s original specification, such as alloy wheels, air-conditioning, bodywork, exhaust system or tinted windows”. However, it doesn’t mention whether a towbar is a relevant modification to a car’s original specification from an insurance perspective.
Crooks explained why he selected ‘No’ in the modifications section when filing the claim, saying: “Our previous insurer did not care when I called them to advise them we were fitting a towbar. In the modifications section of the purchase journey on MoneySuperMarket when asked if the car has been modified if you click on the ‘Help/What does this mean' section it lists alloy wheels, air conditioning, bodywork, exhaust system, suspension or tinted windows. This is why we selected no.”
He added: “What we now realise is that if we had selected yes, we would then have been presented a long list of options in which towbar is one. Given that my previous insurer had stated that the towbar did not affect the insurance and the guidance from the help button on MoneySuperMarket I had no reason to click yes instead of no.
“Similarly, as far as I can see, Flow asks for performance and cosmetic changes to be declared but nothing explicit about needing to declare a towbar. At no point was I asked directly if the car had a towbar.”
> Insurance firm to offer cyclists cheaper car insurance – because they're better drivers
After acknowledging that he had not intentionally misled them, Flow then claimed that it does not insure cars with towbars. “I challenged this as I could not find anything on the website or documents to validate this. Instead, I found a number of articles advising how to tow safely,” he continued.
“At this point, a number of friends of mine with towbars contacted their insurance companies to make sure they would not fall foul. All were told that this did not affect their policy. In fact, two were told that a towbar makes the car safer, and one was given a small reimbursement.”
Crooks mentioned that the towbar wasn’t even on the car as it was detachable, nor was the rear area of the car involved in the incident. However, the insurer dug in, saying that the towbar was not original and hence the policy would be void.
He said that after the lengthy dispute with Allianz/Flow, he contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), with an investigator agreeing that the company was treating them unfairly and recommending to the Ombudsman that Crooks’ insurance should be honoured and compensated.
However, matters were made worse after the FOS decision ruled in favour of the insurance company. The Ombudsman cited the Consumer Insurance Disclosure and Representations Act on ‘misrepresentation’, which applies when information provided by the consumer to the insurer is incomplete or misleading, be it “carelessly, deliberately or recklessly”.
Crooks added: “I challenged his [the Ombudsman’] decision asking how he could have the opposite opinion to his colleagues, a selection of insurance experts and a number of lawyers, whilst reiterating that I have zero proof that Flow would not have insured us. In fact, I have the opposite with a number of examples of Flow advising how to tow safely. However, his final response did not address any of my points and instead just reiterated the decision.
“The fact that the Ombudsman has taken a polarising stance to everyone else and has not provided a single piece of evidence to justify so reeks of inappropriate behaviour somewhere in the relationship between the Ombudsman and Allianz-Flow.”
“The consequences of this decision are catastrophic. Aside from being without the car since February, the concern and stress of arguing this coupled with the colossal consequences have caused severe anxiety and depression (requiring medication) and other health implications let alone weeks of sleepless nights.
“The impact of this decision will leave us in monumental financial debt and heavily limited ability to procure future insurance if we are ever able to afford another car.”
> Whispbar WBT31 3 bike tow bar carrier
An Allianz spokesperson told road.cc: “We understand the distress caused by this accident. Making modifications to your vehicle can have serious implications for your car insurance policy if they are not declared, and can lead to a policy being invalidated.
“The policy chosen did not allow modifications and had we been informed that a towbar had been fitted we would not have provided insurance. The Financial Ombudsman Service has reviewed this case and its decision, which is binding, has found that the outcome we reached in this case was fair and reasonable.”
A spokesperson for MoneySuperMarket said: “We advise that if you make any modifications to your vehicle – or you purchase one that has been customised from the factory model – you should let your insurance provider know as it could impact your premium or invalidate your insurance.”
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after completing his masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Cymru, and also likes to write about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
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82 comments
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/exclusive/365458/driver-whose-towbar-voide...
Same person - happy ending it seems - Lesson learned hit the media hard!
Also Check for mods - I went through to see what mods would affect price - towbar didn't seem to affect anything so even less reason to not payout.
What an excellent article, thank you road.cc. I am insured with the RAC and checked with them online to confirm I had a bike-rack towbar fitted which I had not realised counted as a modification. In this case it was a straightforward £13 extra to update my policy plus £25 fee for admin. I guess the story might have been very different - no doubt similar to the poor cyclist involved here - had I needed to make a claim before reading the article tho'? Good Luck to him/her by the way in getting the insurers and Ombudsman to use common decency and settle this claim.
My experience exactly, you cannot trust insurance companies or any of the ombudsmen.
Insurers doing anything to avoid paying out shocker. 'Twas ever thus. My car came with "towbar preparation". But I have no doubt that slotting the actual hitch into the socket would be a "modification".
I'm sorry to read about this. It is shocking but that fact that the FOS has upheld the insurer's decision is absurd.
I recommend you contact the following:
BBC radio 4 you and yours
BBC watdog
BBC MONEY BOX
The insurance trade body. They will sign up to a code of conduct around transparency and clarity and if this is being so inconsistent between insurers it is something that they need to address and make clearer for customers.
Don't give up the fight.
Definitely disappointing to see this decision from both the insurer and FOS. Particularly as fitment of a towbar is likely to disproportionately affect those the insurance industry is supposed to view as vulnerable customers, who will not find the wording used clear in the slightest.
While an insurer has a duty to combat claims fraud, it seems common sense has gone missing here is people inside the industry can't decide if the wording is clear, then what hope has it of being clear to those outside of it.
All that said also disappointing to see it not mentioned in the article that third-party costs were covered by the insurer - a fact that was mentioned in an AutoExpress article published 2 days prior to this article. Which according to the FOS ruling it did not have to do - albeit this usually involves the insurer initially having to front the cost then suing the customer to recover the costs which most insurers don't like to do.
I agree on this. I checked for an insurance quote on Confused.com yesterday and noticed it states "towbars do not need to be declared as a modification".
But it also said words to the effect of "check the Ts and Cs of the final insurance documents as the insurer may require it to be declared even if we don't".
Clear as mud.
That's definitely not clear messaging and is a bit weaselly by Confused.com - they should have verified that none of their insurance partners require towbar declarations before putting such a statement on their website. I would hope that it's just them being extra cautious, but it's hardly fair to customers to clearly state something and then push responsibility onto the customer if the statement isn't true.
Ultimately though, people need to be careful when going through marketplaces such as Confused.com as you may think that you're their customer, but you need to verify exactly who you're paying the money to as that is who you're entering into a contract with. If Confused.com put misleading info on their website, but you don't actually pay them, then they have little responsibility to you as you're not their customer. (I don't know if you pay Confused.com or their partners directly)
It's very clear - Confused tells customers to check the terms with the insurance provider. This is the case with all insurance policies you buy from aggregation services like Confused, GoCompare, etc, whether home, vehicle, travel, health, and so on.
To include all policy variations on a generic quote service would render the service impossible to use.
However, Confused have chosen to put information on their website that doesn't appear to be correct. That's clearly their mistake. They could simply have amended it to say "Towbars aren't commonly treated as modifications, but please check the policy for details".
Interesting if 3rd party costs have been covered - how can the claimants be out of pocket to the tune of £100k as they claim?
Something fishy going on - could they be exaggerating to put pressure on the Insurance Co?
As with many things, this was forseen by Monty Python.
https://youtu.be/kO2R_DDZPCM?si=zVJcKZw1-xSC8Q2G&t=40
Edit: very slightly NSFW.
Or from another of their works: "if you are not completely satisfied with this product, you've been had".
Hi the ombudsman has a direct route for MPs to raise concerns. I suggest you contact your MP. The FOS is established by Parliament and governance involves the FCA....which has recently been described as being wholly incompetent. I cannot see how there cannot therefore also be similar concerns over the FOS. The contact details for your MP are here https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/work-other-organisations
Is there any suggestion from Allianz that the tow bar was a factor in the accident, or is this simply a case of them weaseling out of paying on spurious grounds? My sense is that it's the latter, in spades, and I will take note when choosing insurance. An insurer that does not pay is worthless.
Sadly, it doesn't matter. All insurance companies work on the principle of "utmost good faith", which means that it places the onus on the purchaser to disclose all information and, if they don't, they reserve the right to simply invalidate or void the policy.
Buying through a comparison website only makes it more important that details of such things are checked thoroughly with the company directly before entering into the contract.
The insurers response implies that they offer multiple different policies, and the one selected by the customer does not allow for any modifications to the vehicle ... ergo it is probably cheaper and therefore features higher up the rankings on the comparison site, whereas an alternate policy from the same company would have covered them but would be more expensive and further down the list.
None of this is to take sides here ... it is the voice of frustration from 26 years working in the industry, and one of the reasons I generally don't use comparison websites.
Also one of the many reasons I got out of the industry.
Many of the car insurance proposals I've filled in over the years have had the direct question; 'Is you car fitted with a tow bar?" The very simple reason being that towing increases your baking distance and should something happen in front of you you're more likely to be involved than if you weren't towing, hence your a higher risk. It doesn't matter whether you use the towbar for bike carrier or towing 3,500kg trailer, the point is you could tow that heavy trailer with needing to tell them.
The second point is these price comparison websites, they are exctly that. Get a price, but you then follow a link to the insurance broker / companies own website. Now here comes the problem, you cannot gurantee those comparison website and the brokers website have identical questions or answers or even the information transfered over was sdone accurately. I've certainly found errors when I've followed links. It's up to you to double check everything, towbar modifications and all.
Very topical. Is this coded advice to Gregg Wallace?
That's OK - you just need one of these.
Just checked my policy with flow. Specifically says towbar are not a alteration that needs to be advised. See my photo with screenshot!
Unfortunately, profile pictures here have all the detail squeezed out of them by running over them repeatedly with a BMW. You can upload an image in a comment, though.
That doesn't say that all of the covered modifications don't need to be declared first though - it just says that Flow will insure vehicles with those modifications but definitely won't for the rest.
Yepp, big difference...and the price will reflect the additional risk posed.
Indeed, which gives the lie to their statement to the OP: "Flow then claimed that it does not insure cars with towbars."
The quote from Flow in the article actually states ...
“The policy chosen did not allow modifications ..." (my bolding)
... which suggests they offer multiple policies, not all of which cover modifications. I imagine offering a policy that doesn't cover any modifications allows them to make rates a lot cheaper and therefore more attractive looking on comparison sites, while the policy(ies) that do cover them appear further down the ranking.
That is the quote from Allianz, yes. But the article also says (reporting the (un)insured): "After acknowledging that he had not intentionally misled them, Flow then claimed that it does not insure cars with towbars."
£100,000?!
Did he write of a new Range Rover?
Depends if a third party or even multiple ones are involved.
There could be personal injury claims included in that sum.
That's insurance companies for you, bunch of shysters.
Time past a modification meant something that increased perfomance or materially affected the the value of the car, not a towbar or air con.
Bicycle insurance polices are among the worst.
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