Had insurance with budget direct on previous vehicle (jeep). Had one not at fault crash and they were difficult to deal with. They only had one inspection centre in Brisbane where the vehicle had to be taken, otherwise would have to wait for assessment til assessor was in our area. Other vehicle reversed into our car whilst pulling out of a shop carpark driveway so their fault entirely, yet when went to pick up vehicle from repairer they would not let me drive it away without paying excess, despite agreeing at assessment time that there would be no fault apportioned. Took several frustrating minutes on hold on phone to get this rectified.
Noticed about a year later that the front headlight that was replaced was getting that glazed cloudy look to it. Went back to repairer who reviewed our file and advised that budget direct had instructed them to fit a used headlight instead of new. Repairer replaced with a new one and followed the matter up themselves. In short, as said by others you get what you pay for. And they too tried to rock the premium up by about $120 at renewal time, so gave them the flick.
FIL had caravan ins with NRMA and had another vehicle run into the side of it whilst merging onto a freeway. Once again, an obvious fault of the other driver (had to have horse blinkers on), but despite the obvious nature of the claim NRMA sent out an investigator to interview him and then mucked around for 3 months after that before finally approving a repair. But as his caravan is early 90's the panels etc are no longer available and they then took another 2 months deliberating over what to do. Finally got a custom repair approved and 6 months after the crash he had his van back.
Those are my 2 most recent insurance experiences.
Don't know the truth of this, but I was told by RACQ about 10 yrs ago that the reason insurance premiums can vary (for them anyway) is that they only base there calculations on vehicles THEY insure, not industry wide figures. So if they insure 100 patrols for eg they base their premiums entirely on what happens to those 100 vehicles ie how many were stolen, how many were crashed, what was the average repair $ etc. So, if they have a bad history with a certain make of vehicle they will be dearer than others. Just what I was told, maybe someone working in insurance for RACQ can confirm if this happens or was ever the case, or whether the consultant was just FOS.
For the record I insured a Mazda Astina V6 with them and they were about $300 cheaper than the next best company out of 5 quotes, hence why I queried the quote and that's the answer I was given.
