I am having issues at work and i need an opinion really.
Heres the situation.
I have been driving class 2 for a company for 2 years.I have a DQ on my licence for speeding on a motorcycle dating back 3 years ago (effectively off my licence and giving me a clean licence in 5 months)
Obviously my company has taken numerous copies of my licence since i started and i have never hidden it in any way.They have had all these copies on their files since day one.Recently they changed insurers and by a stroke of bad luck i had 2 very tiny incidents in 2 weeks.I cracked a tailight on a parked van in covent garden by clipping it with the rear corner of the lorry (overhang)
The following week i was sent to a job i have repeatedly complained about as the lorry is far too big to be doing that job and they have plenty of smaller trucks that could have done it.As i left i took a car mirror off with the overhang again but i would never have gotten out of the job otherwise and my useless drivers mate said i would miss it.I have been driving hgv for 7 years and never had an incident before now.No insurance claims etc.
So the new insurance company in dealing with these minor issues asked to see a copy of my licence which my boss sent to them.They are now saying they will not honour those claims as they were not informed of my DQ (irrelevant since we have drivers having DD bans at my company and nobody has mentioned that) The bottom line is the idiot that was sat in the van whose light i cracked is trying to claim 11 grand personal injury and clearly the insurance company dont want to pay out (funny since he didnt know i’d hit his light and i had to knock on his window to tell him)
so for 3 weeks i havent been driving as the insurance company say they will not insure me to drive based on not delaring a DQ and having had 2 accidents in 2 weeks (bad luck really)
Now the boss called me in today and said the insurance company have said they will insure but the excess will go up from 500 quid to 1000 quid.He then said they will cover the 500 but they want me to cover the other 500.In my haste to get driving again and being worries about the safety of my job since i have a baby at home and my wife isnt working due to maternity leave i agreed.Nothing was signed i just said “whatever,i need to work”
Having sat at home for a while and thought about it,i disagree with this completely.It wasnt my fault,i have always declared my dq to the company and the mess up with informing the insurance company was my bosses fault (They say they asked him to declare any points,DQ’S etc and he says they didnt)
So where do i stand? There cant be a company in the land that has drivers responsible for excess on insurance.Would it mean i’d be responsible for every cracked light and broken mirror in the future?
Im going to go back tomorrow and refuse to drive based on this arrangement as its just not right.But where do i stand in terms of job safety? Can they say im not fit to do the job i was employed for and get rid of me?
If you haven’t signed anything, just get on with it! He cant take money out of your wages without you agreeing to it. I don’t know where you stand with a verbal agreement, but ■■■■ em, just drive and try not to have any more bumps,
if your delivery is too tight for you to get in, refuse it and take it back to the yard, they will soon get the point when they keep failing deliveries
The problem is that im doing multi drop in the west end and central london and minor scrapes are almost inevitable.We have lorries getting damaged almost every week.Im not concerned with them saying i agreed it.That wasnt legally binding and i’d imagine this whole situation is going to be based on a gentlemans agreement as i’m sure there isnt a legal way they can ask me to do this anyway
Konceppt:
The bottom line is the idiot that was sat in the van whose light i cracked is trying to claim 11 grand personal injury and clearly the insurance company dont want to pay out (funny since he didnt know i’d hit his light and i had to knock on his window to tell him)
I don’t know if this will be of any help but I recently faced something similar and I wrote about it here, in a thread I titled “Fighting a Mickey Mouse Insurance Claim”.
The upshot was that I made an official complaint to the Police about two named individuals, and on the same day I wrote to the claimant, an elderly woman who was Company Director informing her that I had made a complaint to the Police, advising her that fraud was one of the most serious offences on the UK statute book (she was South African), and that I was going to do everything in my power to get her sent to prison for as long as possible, the following day she withdrew the claim.
What saved me was taking photos, I show those on the thread I linked to above, and that’s the absolutely essential thing to do, even for the most minor scrape.
In terms of the actual claim,the insurance broker will be dealing with that and i know they are going to fight it and have been mentioning fraud etc.Im not concerned with that since its the companies job to deal with.My issue is where i stand with refusing to accept responsibility for 500 excess in any future claims.Is my job no longer safe?
Lee G:
If you haven’t signed anything, just get on with it! He cant take money out of your wages without you agreeing to it. I don’t know where you stand with a verbal agreement, but [zb] em, just drive and try not to have any more bumps,
if your delivery is too tight for you to get in, refuse it and take it back to the yard, they will soon get the point when they keep failing deliveries
+1. I’m with lee on this one. When you took the job did you have to ring the insurers and put yourself on the company policy…no, I thought not. You gave your details to your boss, it’s up to him to do the rest and he’s failed to do that. This is his problem not yours and I certainly wouldn’t be offering to pay any excess
I agree and so does everyone i work with.The whole company knows it was his fault although he says he was never asked to declare DQ’S etc.
Its just where do i stand if i refuse to drive based on me being responsible for 500 quid excess.Is my job at risk since the insurance company will not insure me unless my excess is 1000 pound.Obviously its my company asking me to be responsible for 500 quid of that, not the insurance company
Konceppt:
Its just where do i stand if i refuse to drive based on me being responsible for 500 quid excess.
No employee is responsible for insurance and coupled with the fact that you’ve not tried to hide your disqualification then I can’t see how they could legally dismiss you nor (as said) deduct an excess from your wages.
Exactly as i thought.Just not sure whether they could use my 2 recent issues (i wont say accidenst since they were realistically nothing claims) and the fact that the insurance company want a higher excess for me as a reason to say unfit to to do the job i was employed for.Although my contract does say driver/warehouseman so i could say well put me in the warehouse then i suppose lol
If I ever did expand and start to take on employees, there is no way in the world I would expect them to pay an insurance excess, any more than I would expect them to pay for wearing out the tyres or using up the diesel. Damage is the “tear” part of “wear and tear”.
so it seems to me that they have decided (as my company always tend to) to recoup the loss of 500 quid excess by charging the driver.Balls to them.I have already told them i wont driver tomorrow and they had already called in an agency driver for tomorrow as they didnt agree terms with the insurance company till today so i’ll speak to them about it tomorrow
Interesting.
My twopenneth…
You, as you say, were a little hasty in agreeing to the £500 excess, but you cant really just carry on as if nothing has happened and hope for the best. If a accident happens and your boss invokes your "gentleman's agreement", it would be bad form to refuse. Having said that, your boss shouldnt have suggested this as a compromise to the insurance company`s demands, bearing in mind hiw own shortcomings in neglecting to inform them of your minor indiscretion on the bike.
But we are where we are. You must go in and tell him you can`t accept the excess of £500 in order to carry on working. As you say as a family man £500 is a lot to suddenly have to find.
What will he do then? Either sack you…Unfair dissmissal? Or agree that the terms are at best unusual and un-enforceable, and relent?.. I dont know your boss. Youve done nothing wrong, so hold your head up and tell him so. Life gets craappy sometimes, this is unfair.
Harry Monk:
I’d be saying to the boss “So if the traffic clerk sends me to the wrong place, does he get the cost of the diesel stopped off of his wages than?”
I employ drivers and would never ask them to pay a trumped up excess.
I had a lad leave me as a drivers mate to go get a driving job and he agreed to pay a 1k excess, he didn’t report minor damage on the truck and ended up paying for it.
Sounds a bit strange really if you’ve had 2 minor knocks since u been there its hardly gonna ■■■■■■■ him and if he’s had all your licence then it’s his own fault for not checking I know when I first started I was 18 Andy boss put me through my 7.5 and for the first year I only got 6.50 an hour basically because the insurance for me was heaving I didn’t think that was unreasonable but he never asked me to stomp up towards the excess.
box clever ask your boss is it fair to charge me ? I don,t think so if that angle don,t work ask him is it legal?Always take a a witness in with you.If there,s a union rep about tell him about your greivance. Always look after number one.good luck ,
