Car insurance Allianz

Good evening
In March someone reversed into my car.
Fortunately the police municipale saw it happen and supervised the constat amiable.
Allianz assured me everything was straightforward and the other party would pay.
They are now saying that we have to pay the repareur and take the facture to them for reimbursement.
We are talking about a complete bumper and sensors for a Toyota prius.
It will not be cheap.

Surely we can expect Allianz to pay the garage.
I dont want to hand over a large sum and wait on Allianz to reimburse us when we are totally innocent in this matter.

Is this normal?

We have had a lot of vehicle accidents/claims over the years in France as a family all with vehicles and never once has anyone had to pay and then be reimbursed. I will add here that they were not all our doing but results of other drivers causing accidents or incidental damage but when OH ā€œfell offā€ the new tarmac road which had been raised up many centimeters from the hard shoulder, on way home from work in his van, the cost of repairs ran into thousands and no way would we or could we have afforded to pay it first and then claim it back. I think its time you ditched that insurance company but you can get the ombudsman to intervene. Never heard the like of! That is what you pay insurance for apart from the franchise that you agree to ususally from ā‚¬150 plus.

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Thank you.
My husband will go in to their office on Tuesday. It was a younger woman who may have got it wrong.
Or my husband could have it wrong but apparently she specifically told him to pay by cheque.

When I was forced off the road into a ditch, all videoed so no doubt about responsability, the cost of over ā‚¬2,000, short of the ā€˜franchiseā€™ (canā€™t remember what it is in English :roll_eyes:) , was paid by the insurance direct to the garage. A couple of months later I was paid directly by the insurance the total amount of the franchise, so I had nothing to pay myself at any point.

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Thanks.
I wonder if theyā€™ve asked my husband to pay the excess and heā€™s muddled.

If itā€™s not your fault you donā€™t pay the excess. The issue might be that you didnā€™t take the car to a garage ā€œapprovedā€ by the insurers, as is your right if you choose to do so. But they may not have a payment process set up with them so you need to fork out and then be reimbursed.

Allianz arranged both the expert and the garage.
Weā€™ve literally followed their instructions.
They were very happy to have the police as witnesses.

Yes, thinking back maybe that is what I might have paid, as I do know that when I got the cheque to cover it I didnā€™t have to pay the repairer.

Weā€™re with Allianz for our car insurance. Weā€™ve only had to use them once when we broke down (on Xmas Eve of all days!). They arranged the tow truck to take our car to the nearest garage, and then paid for taxi fares - both onward to our family for Xmas and then back to the garage a few days later once the work was doneā€¦ Over 100KMs each way! We didnā€™t have to pay upfront for any of that.

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I think that the problem may arise from the fact that every Allianz office is a franchised ā€˜agentā€™.
The franchisee gets paid according to his net premium receipts adjusted by payments out, based on a formula. It sounds like your agent is needing to defer making payments if he can - they then go into the next month/quarter.

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Update.
We got a message from the garage to say our car was ready.
Allianz weā€™re shut so we just rocked up complete with credit card.
The garagiste checked the courtesy car and then gave us our car keys.
I asked if Allianz would be paying him directly and he said yes.

I think a young insurance assistant and my husbandā€™s misinterpretation of what was said caused a muddle.

A bit like ā€˜send reinforcements weā€™re going to advance!ā€™
One of the few things I remember from school.

Thanks for the advice all.

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Oh and I have no idea what it cost.