One of the worst phone calls a parent can receive is one saying your child has been involved in a car accident. So when Peter received such a call, all he wanted to do was focus on his youngest daughter Harriett, rather than worry about an insurance claim.
Harriett had recently returned from her OE in Europe, and she was using Peter’s Volkswagen Golf to get to and from work at a Christchurch plant nursery. All it took, says Peter, was a moment of inattention at an intersection for the car to be written off.
“Both cars were completely destroyed,” says Peter, a father of four daughters. “But thankfully – amazingly – no one was seriously injured.”
Harriett needed to have a ring cut off her finger, which swelled up so much it risked cutting off blood supply, but otherwise was lucky to be unscathed.
“It was, of course, still an enormous shock and a very valuable lesson for my daughter that you never want to be in that situation.”
And, he adds, you never want to be without insurance. Peter says when he called our team, they explained that Harriett had already started the claim process so everything was under control.
Then Peter received a letter from the other driver’s insurance company, asking him to accept liability for the accident. Peter, a software sales executive, says it was a “scary moment” because he thought these things were handled between insurance companies.
“If you were a timid person who complies with everything thrown at you, you might have just responded to it, but I called AMI straight away. They told me not to give it another thought because they would take care of it. This was the most comforting response imaginable. I felt safe and secure, and recognised that I had AMI on my side,” he says, adding that the claim was paid out in a timely manner.
“The reason I have stayed with AMI for so long is because of the people. At the end of the day, it’s about the people you deal with and AMI has good people. Those I have dealt with have been first class in every way. They say what they are going to do and they do it.”
