Car Claims Helper

A car insurance excess is the fixed amount you pay towards a claim.

Depending on the circumstances of the incident that led to your claim, you may have to pay more than one excess: your Basic Excess plus any additional excesses that apply.

For example, if someone under the age of 21 causes an accident while driving your car, you’ll have to pay your Basic Excess (let’s assume it’s $600) plus an additional excess of $600 due to the driver’s age.

It means that, if the damage bill was $5,000, say, you would pay $1,200 and we would pay $3,800.

On top of that, an additional excess of $500 would also apply if the driver who caused the accident hasn’t held their full or open Australian licence for two or more years.

This means if both of these excesses were applied to a damage bill of $5,000, you would pay $1,700 and we would pay $3,300.

Your Basic Excess and the additional excesses are shown on your Insurance Certificate.

If you make a claim, we’ll tell you which excesses apply and when and how to pay them.

You won’t have to pay an excess if the accident is deemed a no-fault accident.

Yes — accidents happen.

Simply lodge your claim. Once your claim has been accepted, pay the applicable excess/es. We’ll then settle the claim with the other driver’s insurer (or, if they’re uninsured, the other driver).

Each repair job is different, so it’s difficult to say for certain how long each job will take. Some can take a few days, others up to two weeks or more, depending on the severity of the damage.

The repairer will give you an estimate of how long the job is likely to take and keep you informed of progress.

Budget Direct has a national network of around 180 repairers who can assess your car’s damage and/or repair it. We also have seven dedicated assessment centres.

When you lodge your claim via your online account or over the phone (1300 139 591) you will be able to secure your booking.

If we decide your car is a write-off, we’ll negotiate with you to either:

• pay you the amount your car is insured for (market or agreed value); or
• replace your car with a new one of the same make, model and specification if you purchased the car new or as a demo model and it becomes a total loss:
  • Within two years or 40,000km (whichever comes first) of the original registration (Gold Comprehensive Car Insurance)

If a new replacement car is not available in Australia, we will pay you the amount you originally paid for the car.

If your car is financed, we’re obliged to pay the finance company any money you still owe them first. We’ll then pay you any residual from the insured amount.

We’ll also arrange and pay for your written-off car to be towed away from the repair shop and disposed of.

You can nominate your preferred repairer as long as your policy includes the ‘choice of repairer’ policy option.

If you nominate your preferred repairer, we’ll ask you to provide us with the repairer’s quotation for the repairs so we can determine whether:

• the quotation is competitive, and
• the proposed repair method is satisfactory.

If either of these criteria is not met, we may decide not to authorise the repairs, and instead offer you the option of:

• having your car repaired by an alternative repairer chosen by us, or
• paying you the reasonable cost to satisfactorily repair your car.

If the car is unsafe to drive, we will pay the cost to tow the car to your preferred repairer up to a maximum of 100 kilometres.

Note that, if we authorise your nominated repairer to undertake the repairs, we’ll guarantee the quality of the repairs but not the time it takes to complete them.