A New Windscreen

[VFR]

Called LV (insurance) as mine was cracked which takes you straight through to Autoglass, so booked the job and the lad turned up this morning.

First thing he noticed as he drove in (he said) was that my offside wiper arm was not the correct fitting for my car & that rang a bell as I have had an issue with the offside wiper being noisy since I bought the car. Once he had pointed out that at rest the wiper should lie flat along the heated element section I could see what I had been missing for so long and as he said it looks like a nearside arm from another Lexus model.

Anyway as it was a Lexus approved vehicle I called Listers Coventry to let them know what had been found & service tell me that they will be looking at the pictures I sent them.

Apart from that a very smooth operation from Chris at Autoglass who certainly knew what he was doing and I would certainly use them again, well hope not though. 

[Mincey]

Glad to hear you had a good experience with Autoglass. I'm now with LV and Betsy really needs her windscreen replacing so hopefully a) they'll use Autoglass and b) the process will be as smooth as yours was.

[Linas.P]

Don't forget that screen replacements counts as claims on your insurance policy. So one needs to consider whenever it is better to do it via insurance or rather just pay for replacement themselves i.e. assume your insurance will go up by ~20% for next few years, if you paying £400 for insurance it may be worth it, if £1000, then you may be better off just paying the cost yourself. 

Autoglass is hit and miss, they are massive company and pretty much the go to place for all windscreens... sometimes they are amazing, sometimes they are not. When they replaced windscreen on my IS the heating part never worked again. To be fair, their warranty would have replaced the windscreen again, but car got written-off before I could be bothered to make the warranty claim. As far as replacement job, it was good, cannot complain, quick, clean, replaced the trims... although all the parts were non-Lexus... at the same time genuine Lexus screen would have been double the price and wait time for months. 

[serbarry]

I had the rear window replaced in my previous Prius and the windscreen replaced in my actual GS last year by Allglass/Autoglass through a claim to my insurance and did not count as a claim in both cases. Maybe in Ireland is different.  

[VFR]

No LV tell me (& on the policy) that it does “not” affect my no claims as if it had I would have mulled over paying direct, as it was LV have a £190 excess anyway even on my fully comp protected jobbie. 

[wharfhouse]

14 minutes ago, VFR said:

No LV tell me (& on the policy) that it does “not” affect my no claims as if it had I would have mulled over paying direct, as it was LV have a £190 excess anyway even on my fully comp protected jobbie. 

Linas is correct in that you have to declare a replacement windscreen claimed on insurance when you are looking to renew  insurance - there is usually a category for this if doing it on the online comparison sites. As you said though it does not affect you as per an accident claim so your no claims years stay intact. If you don't declare it and the insurance company runs their checks when you're renewing it will most likely show up and you'll be contacted about it (I know - it happened to me and they they may ask for an extra premium as it wasn't declared). As Linas pointed out insurance companies factor in replacement windscreens in their risk profiling and so regardless of the fact that the no claim years are intact it can still increase renewal premiums (they use any reason they can find...) 

[Mincey]

55 minutes ago, wharfhouse said:

Linas is correct in that you have to declare a replacement windscreen claimed on insurance when you are looking to renew  insurance - there is usually a category for this if doing it on the online comparison sites. 

Ooops - I had a new screen on my IS250 back in 2019 I think. I'd not thought i needed to declare it and have never been asked, yet.....

[wharfhouse]

18 minutes ago, Mincey said:

Ooops - I had a new screen on my IS250 back in 2019 I think. I'd not thought i needed to declare it and have never been asked, yet.....

I didn't think I had to either until a few years back when the insurance company I had renewed with called me and asked why I hadn't declared a windscreen claim after they had checked the central insurance database and found it...

[VFR]

In that case I will make a point of telling them at renewal time.

[Linas.P]

6 hours ago, VFR said:

No LV tell me (& on the policy) that it does “not” affect my no claims as if it had I would have mulled over paying direct, as it was LV have a £190 excess anyway even on my fully comp protected jobbie. 

Yes, sorry I probably should have been clearer - as Phil explained it does not affect your "no claim bonus", but it is still "the claim" recorded against you. It is same thing when you get involved in the accident which is not your fault, that does not affect your "no claim bonus", but it is still "the claim" on your policy. And yes - even if it wasn't your fault your insurance will increase next year!

No claim bonus is basically an industry wide "discount", it varies from company to company, but it is generally accepted that they discount up-to 5 years and approximately 5% for each year of NCB.

The accident/claim history is completely separate thing which just feeds into their "magic scam algorithm" and your "risk" increases with each claim, to be hones in my experience it does not matter whenever it is your fault or non-fault... again this may be anecdotal evidence, but I found personally that each "claim" increased cost of my insurance by ~10%, but when I got 3 claims (2 non-fault accidents + windscreen) then suddenly my insurance jumped by £500 as many companies outright refused to insure me. Next year 2 out of 3 claims expired (over 3 years old) and insurance dropped by ~£400. 

Now to be fair - windscreen claims usually do not impact you before you move to a different insurance company. Maybe it is sort of "unspoken" trick to lock you into relationship. However, for me it was always cheaper to change provider than it was to renew, renewals always much more expensive than new quote, so that is probably why I found out about this. 

[Mincey]

11 hours ago, VFR said:

In that case I will make a point of telling them at renewal time.

Likewise!

[VFR]

Update.

Had no further response from Listers Coventry (where I bought the car) so thought I would contact Lexus UK, about a hour later a missed call from the dealer on the phone so called them back in the morning.

I see that you have had the vehicle “over” 2 years now = so why now after all this time ?

Had I not had a new windscreen I would have been none the wiser I guess but now I do know ?

Can you pop into the dealership & we will look at it.

Sorry cannot as I now live in Devon but you do have the pictures I sent (to look at I am thinking ?)

Ah in that case we cann …………..

Ok look if you are going to question this after I paid you over 25k I will simply buy the correct item myself, bye !

 

Let Lexus UK know what had gone on & will simply get the correct arm, but this just confirms by distrust of dealer service dept’s (Lexus or otherwise)

Sales ……… no problem Sir just sign here

You want ?, no problem Sir. 

 

Does he (the service manager) really think that a pensioner who paid cash for the vehicle & is not a mechanic and had the car service since at Lexus main dealers would lie about a faulty wiper arm & not just accept that for some reason it has the wrong one fitted “at point of sale”

Tis a funny old world we live in now. 

[Linas.P]

3 hours ago, VFR said:

Let Lexus UK know what had gone on & will simply get the correct arm, but this just confirms by distrust of dealer service dept’s (Lexus or otherwise)

Sales ……… no problem Sir just sign here

You want ?, no problem Sir. 

That is kind of opposite really - Sales are the ones who are dodgy and slimy... service manager just get's to deal with all the lies in the end. Sales are the ones who sold the car with wrong arm, they may even knew it is wrong, but on used cars the margins are tight so they will do whatever they need to do to get it prepped and ready for sale. Lexus "used approved" is not worth the paper it is written on. Do you know they can literally stamp the book for service car didn't have... yes they can, it is in small print. They do their inspection and if car passes then they "certify the history". So the reason why you have wrong wiper arm is fault of sales people, not service people. 

The second part is exactly what they do and that is sign of dishonesty... they overly friendly and just want to take your money... hence nothing is a problem... they just say yes yes yes and they really do nothing. 

Simply said - used cars sales is dodgy business no matter where you get the car, low margins, cheap repairs etc. Don't fall into "authorised dealership safety" trap. They are just used cars salesman. So have everything in writing, take pictures of everything and treat them like anyone selling car. I guess the only benefit of dealership is that if your car goes wrong then you likely still going to find them at the same address even few years after the purchase... but apart of that all same issues. 

I am not going to go into the details, but they sold me the car without brake pads, basically 3000 miles later it is metal on metal. I have noticed that brakes are low and I asked them to do pre-purchase inspections. They had one which was like 3 months old. What they said... "yes sir, of course sir, no problem sir", day before picking-up "have you checked the brakes... yes sir, or course sir, they are all good sir". Good that I had all in the email. 3000 miles later, when another Lexus dealer basically told me there are no brakes to speak off, I asked them - "did you do inspection as I asked"... NOPE. 

[VFR]

Well had no further response from Lexus customer enq’s so even though my vehicle was a Lexus Approved one it would seem that they are really not interested once sold.

 

[VFR]

Not long after posting the above I received an email from customer relations apologising with a £25 voucher attached, but saying all they could do was reach out to the dealer.

Have taken the arm off to check the makers markings on the rear and speaking to another dealers spares man they did not recognise any of the markings / numbers which is the same as my searching online has shown (not OE)

Sent the pictures of the markings to customer services so they can check for themselves just if this arm is OE or not ?