If something has failed on your vehicle, the most important thing to know is this: speak to us before any repair work begins. Once a garage has started, or worse finished, we may not be able to cover it — not because we are looking for a reason to decline, but because we no longer have any way to verify what failed or what it should have cost.
Before you authorise any work. This single step is the difference between a paid claim and a rejected one more often than anything else.
The four steps
- Stop driving the vehicle if it is unsafe. Continuing to drive a car with a known fault can turn a covered repair into an uncovered one, because the additional damage was avoidable. If it cannot be driven, recovery is included in your cover.
- Call us on 020 4577 0371, or email support@clearpathprotection.co.uk. Have your registration and policy details ready. If it is out of hours, email us and we will pick it up first thing.
- Take the vehicle to a garage. Tell them you have ClearPath cover and that the repair needs authorising before work starts. The garage will diagnose the fault and send us the details.
- We authorise and settle. Once we have confirmed the failure is covered, we agree the repair with the garage and settle directly with them wherever possible, so you are not out of pocket waiting for a refund.
What to have ready when you call
- Your vehicle registration
- Current mileage
- A description of the symptoms — noises, warning lights, when it happens
- Your service history, or where the car was last serviced
- The garage you would like to use, if you have one
What is covered while your car is off the road
- Recovery — up to £60 including VAT towards getting your car to a garage
- Vehicle hire — up to £45 a day including VAT for up to 7 days, once repairs start, where the manufacturer repair time is over 8 hours and we approve it first
- Up to £3,000 per claim, with unlimited claims throughout your policy
- Garage labour up to £100 per hour
Recovery and vehicle hire are paid only in connection with an authorised claim, and both count towards the £3,000 limit for that claim rather than sitting on top of it.
The claim form and guide
This is the document your garage will need. It walks through the process step by step and contains the form the repairer completes. Worth downloading now and keeping with your policy, rather than hunting for it on the day something goes wrong.
Download the Claims Guide & Form (PDF)
The honest part: what will not be covered
We would rather you knew this now than at the moment you need us. No warranty in the UK covers the following, and any provider suggesting otherwise is setting you up for a rejected claim:
- Wear and tear. Brake pads, discs, tyres, wipers, bulbs and clutches wear out with use. That is not a failure, it is a service item.
- Pre-existing faults. Anything already wrong when the policy started, whether you knew about it or not.
- Routine servicing. Oil, filters, cambelts and scheduled work.
- Missed servicing. If the car has not been serviced as required, a related failure may not be covered. Keep your receipts.
- Unauthorised repairs. Work carried out before we have agreed it.
- Accident, fire, flood and theft. That is what your car insurance is for.
Your policy documents set out the full list. If anything in them is unclear, call us and ask before you need to claim rather than after.
Why any of this matters
Around one car in four fails its MOT first time, and an MOT does not even test the expensive things — engines, gearboxes, turbochargers, hybrid and EV drive systems. A gearbox replacement runs from roughly £800 to £3,000 depending on the vehicle. Most households do not have that sitting in an account waiting.
A warranty does not make your car more reliable. What it does is turn an unpredictable four-figure bill into a predictable monthly cost, and put someone on the phone who deals with garages for a living on the day it happens.
