Tower

"I have my house, content and my car insured with Tower since years. Someone bumped into my car and look what service I got from Tower. Call and hold online for 1 hour or more as they won't call us. Email them and forget they will reply. Leave message they day they will call within 4 hours but that's just automated message who cares? What a wast of my hard earned money. Not recommend anyone to use them if service is so disgusting. I have no car with me since Monday as the haven't confirmed to Panels beaters for repair so they won't release courtesy car. What a shame. Hopeless"

"Do not ignore the many other one-star reviews or the unhappy people in the comments on social media. Tower Insurance has fundamental problems that should not exist at any established insurance company. Ignore that their premiums might be slightly cheaper – it's not worth it. Don't be fooled by the awards they have apparently won. Clearly those awards are either rigged, biased, fake or the judges didn't ever talk to the customers. Or Tower was the only entrant. Tower should be avoided at all costs. Our car insurance claim was a slam-dunk – relatively minor damage with a third party that was entirely at fault and had insurance. It should have been quick but instead it took almost two months before the repairs were even authorised. During this time there was radio silence from Tower. I tried to get updates several times, but when you call them, you wait for upwards of an hour on hold only to get through to someone that can't tell you anything new. They said they'll organise a callback from someone who can help, but the call never came. Once I waited on hold for close to an hour and AFTER they had gone through the security checks (so they absolutely knew who I was), the call got cut off. They could have called me back but of course they didn't. They simply do not care. Frustrated and not willing to spend another hour on the phone for potentially the same result, I tried Facebook Messenger. Seven hours after my message, I received an apologetic reply saying I would receive 'an urgent callback'. This 'urgent' call would be by Tuesday or Wednesday. The current day was Thursday. How is this in any way urgent? Needless to say nobody called me back. So I tried their online chat service. The Tower web page literally says you'll speak to a local representative but after a few odd responses, I had to question where the person was from. He confirmed he was indeed not based in New Zealand. So the website is blatantly lying. Speaking of lies, I was told I would receive the contact details of my case manager. I never did, and this only added to the frustration of getting in touch. When I queried online who my contact should have been, I was told my case manager was called 'Fast Track Claims'. I don't need to point out how that is A: not a human's name, and B: an absolute joke. Nothing about this has been 'fast'. I struggled so much to get in touch with Tower that I resorted to talking to the other party and my repairer instead to confirm that Tower had indeed not done anything yet. I felt like I was having to project manage the claim to get it over the line. The whole situation sucked. Imagine two months of not knowing if your claim is even covered; of thinking the third party's insurance might close the book and think nothing is happening; of not knowing whether something might be wrong with the claim and you might be footing the bill for the repair. I am not alone. There are so many others experiencing this same predicament. Tower are happy to take our money but they will do the absolute bare-minimum to hold up their end of the deal. I've likely put more effort into this review than any Tower employee has done for their job all year, so please do yourself a favour and steer well clear. As soon as our claim was settled, we moved all our insurance to another provider and we will never be back."

"Stupidly high premium for what you're covered for. Had my partner paying almost double my yearly premium with a competitor - oh and of course, I am younger, a male under 25, and driving a "luxury vehicle", where she drove a lesser valued Mitsubishi of the same year. Math doesn't quite add up. Customer service side of things - They were great, and made claiming for the theft straightforward to deal with. Prompt and got it taken care of quickly enough."

"Worse insurance ever I have had. I moved from Ami to Tower thinking it was a better deal as they seemed more professional. I have made a claim 4 weeks ago and I am still waiting for a response even though I have sent emails and I have called customer service more than 5 times. Customer service took around 2hrs to receive a call. Imagine a person doing 9 to 5 job, how hard for him to deal with it. I am stressed out now. I don’t even know what to do in this situation. Either keep waiting for an answer that will take months or just fix my car by myself. Obviously that SHOULD NOT happen as I am paying for an insurance so I do not worry about car bills. Extremely awful."