Abdulghani Al-Qash Al-Madinah Vehicle insurance is a mandatory requirement in the Kingdom. People find themselves forced to pay money to buy insurance. Driving license will not be renewed unless there is insurance. However, people's faith in insurance companies is nearly nonexistent and any trust they have in them is shaking. Most insurance companies avoid serving customers after they receive their money. When customers need their services, they refer them to their branch headquarters in distant locations where they will be served. This is the work style of almost all insurance companies. The many insurance offices near the traffic police headquarters employ only one or two people. All what they care about is to provide you with offers and facilitate your car registration after taking your money. At the end they give you a piece of paper and not a card. The companies know that the customer will most of the time lose this piece of paper or if he places it in the car, in time it will be destroyed. Surprisingly when you apply for insurance, all these companies race to provide you with the best services. Prices vary from one office to another; sometimes it is a 100 percent difference. People are surprised by this huge difference but they become wiser when they meet with their first accident. People will then wake up to the fact that they were victims to these small offices that only collect money. When people visit them asking to get the coverage, they are told that the main offices are in the three main cities, Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam and they will transfer the paperwork to them. Customers will be driven to the point where they will give up because of this long process. Here we raise the question: What about the other areas in the Kingdom? When people are involved in car accidents in the smaller cities, what will they do? Why are there no branches of insurance companies in all 13 Saudi provinces? A big city like Madinah which receives millions of visitors every year sees thousands of car accidents. The same goes for the coastal towns. The answer always is that they will mail the paperwork to the parent company. Insurance companies should be forced to open branches in every province and they should be authorized to pay immediate compensation for customers who had paid for their services. As for these little offices near the traffic police headquarters, they are nothing but a sham. There should be rules and regulations governing the relationship between the insurance companies and their customers, and they should be publicized. Most people do not know their rights. People should not be forced to file complaints. We live in an era when people have to know their rights and there should be transparency in business transactions.
