Claim Clock

The problem in detail

Once a claim is in the hands of an insurer or its approved repairer, the counterparty controls the facts that decide it — whether the damage was wear or an insured event, whether a part is genuinely on back order, when the engineer will actually come. Consumers get vague phone updates, no written record and no way to challenge a causation verdict, so they wait indefinitely without a car or heating, unable to decide whether to pay for their own repair, hire a replacement or escalate. Today they rely on memory, service history, DIY attempts and strangers on forums.

Proposed product

A consumer-side claim file that turns a stalled repair into a documented, chaseable case. The user logs the claim once; the tool builds a timestamped timeline of every call, visit, promise and missed date, prompts them to capture the evidence that actually decides these disputes (dated photos, service history, fault codes, the exact part number quoted), and at each stall produces a plain-English written request naming the specific thing being withheld — the part order reference and supplier ETA, the engineer's causation report, the policy clause relied on — with a response deadline and the next escalation step and date (final response, ombudsman eligibility, right to arrange your own repair). It also checks quoted part numbers against public supplier and factor stock listings so the user can say 'three suppliers show this in stock' rather than accept 'it's on back order'.

Why now

This is largely a long-standing problem rather than a new one: FOS already publishes dedicated guidance on unreasonable vehicle repair delay and compensation for distress and inconvenience, and Consumer Voice reported quarterly FOS data showing car, motorcycle and buildings insurance complaints at a five-year high (3,869 car and motorcycle complaints in the quarter). The evidence shows no platform, price or rule change that newly opens this; what it does show is a persistent, officially recognised complaint category and an existing free tool (Resolver) already covering the generic case-file-and-template part.

Smallest useful version

A web tool covering one narrow scenario — a stalled vehicle insurance repair or a boiler cover claim — where the user answers a short set of questions and gets back a dated case timeline, a tailored written chase letter demanding the part reference and ETA or the causation reasoning, a diary of escalation dates, and reminders to log each contact. Success is users returning to log events and reporting that a letter produced a dated commitment, a part arrived, or the decision was reversed.

Potential ways to charge

• Free case file — £0: timeline logging, reminders and escalation dates, to earn the paid step (anchored to Resolver, which offers a free case file, templates and reminders)
• Single case pack — £12 one-off: the tailored chase letter, evidence checklist for that repair type, and full escalation diary for one claim (typical for comparable one-off consumer document tools; no price in the evidence)
• Active case subscription — £6 per month while the claim is live: repeated letters at each stall, deadline chasing, parts-stock check where it is possible, and ombudsman submission pack (typical for comparable tools)
• Assisted case — £75 one-off: a human reviews the file and drafts the escalation and ombudsman complaint (anchored loosely to the FOS distress and inconvenience band of up to £300 cited in the evidence, not to any observed UK hourly claim-chasing price)

Routes to early customers

• Reply-level presence where the complaints already appear: Trustpilot pages for home-emergency claim handlers such as Sedgwick Home Emergency Network and Home Emergency Assist, where reviewers describe repeat visits and no updates
• UK consumer forums where posters ask whether the Financial Ombudsman is the next step after an insurer delay, including the home-emergency and boiler-warranty threads that generated this idea
• MoneySavingExpert-adjacent audiences already using free complaint tools — content aimed at people who have tried Resolver and still cannot get a part reference or a causation report
• Independent gas engineers and local garages, who see customers stuck waiting on an insurer's approved repairer and could hand over a card or link

Main risks

• Resolver already provides a free case file, templates, reminders, company contact processes and regulator escalation, endorsed by MoneySavingExpert — most of Claim Clock's generic half is already free, so the paid version must live or die on the repair-specific features
• The parts-stock check, the main differentiator, is unverified: no source confirmed that manufacturer heating spares or dealer-only vehicle parts appear in queryable public stock listings
• The riskiest assumption is untested — a deadline-bearing letter from a consumer may simply join the same queue as a phone call, producing no part reference, ETA or reversed decision
• Short, episodic need: a claim stalls for weeks, then ends. Subscription retention is poor by nature and one-off pricing caps revenue per user
• No direct willingness-to-pay evidence in the UK context — the paid-professional comparison is mostly US public adjusters working on a percentage of large property settlements, not hourly boiler-part chasing

Questions to test first

• Attempt the parts-stock check by hand for ten real quoted part numbers (five boiler spares, five vehicle parts) against public supplier and factor sites; if fewer than half are findable, drop the feature before building anything
• Write three chase letters by hand for real stalled claims found on Trustpilot or forums, send them with the claimant's consent, and record whether any produced a dated commitment, part reference or reversed decision within 14 days
• Put up a one-page landing offer ('get the written letter that makes them name the part and the date') with a £12 checkout and run it against forum and Trustpilot audiences to measure click-to-pay, not just interest
• Interview ten people mid-claim about what they tried first, whether they used Resolver, and what they would have paid at the worst moment
• Draft the boiler and motor letter templates against the FOS vehicle-repairs criteria (replacement vehicle offered, policy terms, hire costs) and have a complaints-experienced person check they are defensible

Evidence and sources

The sources this assessment is based on. Evidence level: Indicative, counted from these sources as described in how ideas are assessed. Findings are what a source shows; anything the research only inferred is marked as an inference.

Research findings

• SupportsTrustpilot review pages for home emergency claim handlers (Home Emergency Assist; Sedgwick Home Emergency Network)

  Shows: product-review complaints showing stalled repairs with no written updates

  Trustpilot review pages for home-emergency claim handlers contain exactly the stall pattern the idea targets: a reviewer of the Sedgwick Home Emergency Network describes an Admiral home-emergency claim where one engineer diagnosed a valve and a second engineer turned up days later, and the page summary notes most of the sampled reviews were unhappy overall. On the Home Emergency Assist page a reviewer recounts calling again the next morning with the leak still ongoing because they had received no update, and another says the claims process 'takes forever'. This is the requested observed finding from a non-community class — paying customers, in public reviews, reporting repeat visits, silence between contacts and no written status.

• SupportsMoneySavingExpert forum threads on an 11-day home-emergency boiler repair and a boiler warranty refusal; PistonHeads thread on a warranty invoice dispute

  Shows: forum accounts of the specific stall mechanics the product addresses

  Forum posts corroborate the two failure modes named in the idea. In one, a household with vulnerable occupants went through LV home emergency cover rather than a private gas engineer who could have fixed the pump next day, and the insurer took four days just to authorise; the poster asks whether the Financial Ombudsman is the next step. In another, a manufacturer refused a warranty claim on a three-year-old boiler because an engineer's note from the first visit recorded the installation position as breaching their health-and-safety requirements — a causation verdict written by the counterparty that the consumer had no record of and no way to contest. This is the community origin of the candidate, so it confirms rather than independently validates.

• SupportsUK Financial Ombudsman Service consumer pages and case studies, plus consumer-press reporting on FOS complaint volumes

  Shows: regulator guidance and complaint-volume reporting on repair delays

  The FOS publishes a dedicated 'vehicle repairs' consumer page setting out how it assesses unreasonable delay — whether the insurer offered a replacement vehicle, what the policy says should happen, and whether hire costs incurred during the delay were covered — and a case study on a consumer seeking compensation for delay and inconvenience on a motor claim (distress and inconvenience award banded up to £300). Consumer Voice reported that quarterly FOS data showed car, motorcycle and buildings insurance complaints at a five-year high, with 3,869 car and motorcycle insurance complaints in the quarter. This confirms both the escalation ladder the product would schedule against and that delay/communication is a high-volume, officially recognised complaint category.

• SupportsUnited Policyholders guidance on hiring professional claim help and questions to ask before hiring a public adjuster; ValuePenguin public-adjuster guide; ZipRecruiter freelance independent adjuster listings

  Shows: paid-professional substitute for consumer claim chasing

  A paid market exists for someone to handle a stalled or disputed claim on the consumer's behalf: the non-profit United Policyholders publishes guidance on hiring professional claim help and on vetting a public adjuster, noting the larger the claim the easier it is to find one who will take you on, and ValuePenguin states policyholders commonly hire public adjusters to handle disputes and reopen claims. ZipRecruiter lists freelance independent adjuster roles. Caveat: these are mostly US property-claim adjusters working on a percentage of a large settlement, and act for insurers as often as policyholders — they are not a direct read-through to someone paying by the hour to chase a boiler part, so this is partial rather than clean willingness-to-pay evidence.

• Weakens the caseResolver.co.uk product and company-complaint pages; third-party blog write-up of using Resolver

  Shows: existing free competitor offering case file, templates, reminders and regulator escalation

  Resolver, a free UK tool endorsed by MoneySavingExpert, already offers a 'case file' that keeps communications in one place, email templates, up-to-date company contact processes, reminders, and the option to escalate to the regulator when the time is right, with a dedicated insurance-complaints section. A user write-up confirms it sends complaints via a unique email address, notifies you of replies, and lets you upload evidence into the case file. This materially weakens the generic 'timeline + templated letter + ombudsman deadline' half of Claim Clock; the defensible remainder is the repair-specific evidence prompts (fault codes, causation report, exact part number) and the parts-stock check.

Where the problem was reported

Public posts in which people described this problem, grouped into one problem before research began.

• 3rd party insurance paying for car repairs after rear-end collision — anything help with out-of-pocket charges? · r/Insurance · 1 October 2026
• Advice on replacing heat exchanger vestibule panel · r/hvacadvice · 29 September 2026
• Insurance says my car’s no-start issue is unrelated to the accident, but it had zero starting problems before the crash. What should I do? · r/Insurance · 22 September 2026

Looked for, not found

• No real source surfaced for three things that decide this idea. First, search-demand data (volumes for queries like 'is my boiler part really on back order' or 'letter to insurer chasing repair') — none returned. Second, any job or freelance posting for hourly consumer-side claim chasing in the UK motor/home-warranty context, as distinct from US public adjusters on contingency. Third, and most important, any evidence that public supplier or motor-factor stock listings are queryable for the manufacturer part numbers quoted on warranty jobs — manufacturer-specific heating spares and dealer-only vehicle parts are plausibly not listed on open factor sites, and no searched source confirmed otherwise. The parts-stock check is the main differentiator and its feasibility is currently unverified.