Advantage Insurance Company Limited · DRN-6285851

The complaint Mr P complains about Advantage Insurance Company Limited’s (Advantage) handling and settlement of a claim under a motor insurance policy. What happened Mr P had a comprehensive motor insurance policy with Advantage. In August 2025, he made a claim after damage was sustained by his car in an accident. Advantage made the decision to write off the car. Advantage issued an initial complaint response in September 2025, addressing Mr P’s concerns with its total loss decision and poor communication. It upheld Mr P’s complaint about poor service and communication and paid him £100. Following this, Advantage valued Mr P’s car at £2,003 and offered him a settlement on this basis, in late September 2025. Mr P sent Advantage information to support a higher valuation, including adverts of cars on the market Mr P said were comparable to his. After reviewing Mr P’s evidence, and on further review by its engineer, Advantage increased its valuation to £2,350 in early October 2025. It paid Mr P this as an interim settlement in late October 2025. Mr P complained about Advantage’s valuation and decision to pay him an interim settlement. Advantage issued a complaint response in November 2025. Among other points, it said the following: • It was satisfied its final valuation was fair and it didn’t find the adverts Mr P provided to be persuasive. • It made the interim payment fairly, while the valuation dispute was still being reviewed. • It didn’t agree it caused substantial delay on the claim. • It gave Mr P instructions on how to retain his car if he wished to pursue this. • It accepted its recovery agent shouldn’t initially have told Mr P his car would be destroyed (crushed). So it paid Mr P a further £200 compensation. Mr P remained unhappy, so he referred his complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. He outlined the following points he wanted our Service to consider: • The interim settlement was paid without his agreement – and in paying this, Advantage unfairly treated the matter as concluded. • He had concerns about Advantage’s valuation and his examples show a higher fair market value. • There was poor handling and communication by Advantage. He was given conflicting information. The Investigator didn’t recommend the complaint be upheld. They said Advantage’s approach to valuing Mr P’s car was fair, and it hadn’t acted unfairly in paying Mr P the

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interim settlement. They weren’t persuaded Advantage caused avoidable delays on the claim, but for the instances of poor service under the claim, they said the £300 compensation it had paid was fair. Mr P didn’t agree, and he said he wanted someone to listen to all his calls with Advantage. Because the complaint couldn’t be resolved, It’s been passed to me to decide. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Mr P has provided a lot of information in support of his complaint. I assure Mr P that I’ve taken everything he’s provided into account. But in this decision I’ve focused on what I think are the key issues in this complaint. No discourtesy is intended by this, but it simply reflects the informal nature of the way that the Financial Ombudsman Service reviews complaints. Firstly, I appreciate Mr P requested a phone call to discuss my decision. However, I must remain impartial, and a call could be inferred as an informal hearing and create an unfairness in our process, and it is uncommon for an ombudsman to call a customer because of this. This is also why, when information is needed, the investigator is used to obtain this. Ultimately, the ombudsman can decide if they have enough information to reach their outcome and I have done so in this case. So while I also acknowledge Mr P’s request for a review of all his calls with Advantage, I don’t consider this is necessary for me to reach an outcome on this complaint. Like a lot of policies, Mr P’s policy with Advantage says it can pay the market value of his car in the event of damage. The policy defines market value as: “The cost of replacing your car in the United Kingdom at the time the loss or damage occurred with one of the same make, model, age and condition. This may not necessarily be the value you declared when the insurance was taken out. Your insurer may use publications such as Glass’s Guide to assess the market value and will make any necessary allowances for the mileage and condition of your car and the circumstances in which you bought it.” I consider the above to be in line with the common definition of market value, with many other policies defining it in a similar way. But determining a vehicle’s market value isn’t an exact science. Ultimately, it’s an opinion. There are no rules or regulations that require Advantage to go about valuing vehicles in a specific way. And It’s not the role of this Service to come to an exact valuation of a consumer’s car. But we do look to see if an insurer has acted fairly and reasonably in how it came to its valuation. And our Service does have an approach on how to determine this. To do this, we consider the available values returned by valuation guides - although not all guides return valuations for every vehicle. We find valuations obtained from these valuation guides to be persuasive evidence, because they take into account nationwide data to try and estimate the vehicle’s value, taking into account all the factors needed, in line with usual policy terms (make, model, age, condition etc). Here, values were returned by three guides. I’ve seen evidence to show Advantage obtained valuations of £2,350 and £1,656. And we were able to obtain our own separate valuation of £1,721. These valuations were based on the same make, model, mileage and variant of Mr P’s vehicle at the time of the loss, so I consider them to be persuasive evidence of the appropriate and fair market value.

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Keeping in mind the values returned, we then look to see where the insurer’s valuation sits within those guide prices. And if it’s close to the highest valuation, we’re likely to say the valuation is fair – unless there’s evidence to suggest otherwise. Here, Advantage valued Mr P’s car in line with the highest value returned by the guides. So I’ve considered if there’s other evidence to suggest that valuation was unfair. In doing so, I’ve considered the adverts Mr P provided in support of a higher valuation. Many of these are for adverts for cars of a different age, mileage and body type to Mr P’s car. And for some others, the mileage and age are not clear. For example, some adverts were for an estate model, when I understand Mr P’s was a hatchback. And other examples were for vehicles from 2006, or with a mileage in the region of 113,000, when Mr P’s car was from 2004 with a mileage over 180,000. I’m conscious too that advertisements are always open to negotiation so I can’t be sure what the actual sale price would have been. So overall, I don’t find the adverts Mr P provided, to be persuasive in showing the valuation Advantage relied on, in the circumstances, was unfair. For the reasons outlined above, I find that Advantage acted fairly in how it valued Mr P’s car. So I won’t ask it to increase its settlement. Turning to the interim settlement, I agree with the Investigator that in paying Mr P the interim settlement, Advantage didn’t cause him any detriment. And I’ve seen that when it communicated its intention to pay the interim settlement, it also acknowledged Mr P was unhappy with the valuation and confirmed a dispute had been logged. So I don’t consider Advantage treated the matter as concluded, or that it led Mr P to believe this. It follows that I don’t consider Advantage acted unfairly on this point. On the matter of overall delays, I’ve reviewed all the available evidence, and I’m not persuaded Advantage caused substantial avoidable delays on the claim. After initial issues with the recovery of the car, I can see that Advantage took steps to arrange collection of the vehicle, following which it provided an initial valuation, and then a final revised valuation shortly after. I think it did so within a reasonable amount of time in the circumstances. I do think however, there was poor service on the claim by Advantage, including through its agents. I can see there were instances where Mr P was unnecessarily given confusing or incomplete information, for example about the retention of his car, or what the process would be for the handling of the car. I acknowledge also Mr P’s comments about the difficulty in speaking to a manager. And I’m satisfied all this would’ve caused Mr P avoidable distress and inconvenience, on top of what could reasonably be attributed to the claim itself. But, taking into account that Advantage’s final settlement was fair in the circumstances, I think the £300 compensation it already paid Mr P is fair and reasonable. So I won’t direct it to pay Mr P anything else. Mr P also raised concerns about Advantage’s recent communications on the matter of liability. But as outlined by our Investigator, Mr P will need to contact Advantage about this directly in the first instance. My final decision For the reasons outlined above, my final decision is that I don’t uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr P to accept or reject my decision before 26 May 2026.

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Monjur Alam Ombudsman

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