General News
2 February, 2026
Insurance Bungle
A Clifton resident has been accused of fraud by Suncorp after the insurance company assumed her car was out in the open during last November’s hailstorm.
Lola Hosking can remember heading to work about 1pm on November the 1st 2025, looking at the sky and thinking she should put her car undercover.
She parked her Mustang in the car port and put on the hail proof cover.
She got a call a little while later from her neighbours saying that her house and car had suffered extensive damage and that she ought to get home.
When she got home the car cover had been ripped and the left side of the car had been whacked by the hail.
Suncorp Insurance organised for Lola’s car to be taken to Wizard Rocklea to be assessed, during which Lola was told that some photos would be sent to a panel beater as on some edges the paint had been taken off.
Fast forward a week and Lola was shocked when she received a call from Suncorp letting her know that her car was being taken in for ‘forensic fraud testing.’
They didn’t believe that the damage done to Lola’s car was hail damage.
This is despite the dozens of other claims Suncorp had done in the aftermath of November’s storms.
The car was taken away by tow truck on the 24th of November.
It was returned a week later with no plates and yellow writing on the windscreen.
Lola even left the cover she used in the car so that the investigator could see that’d she’d had one on.
The report came back in the second week of January.
The investigation found that 52% of the damage was done with a hammer, the other 48% a hailstorm.
But in the report the investigator based his findings on the assumption the car was out in the open, without a cover and that the hail was 15mm in diameter.
This is contrary to Lola’s account, the witness statements from her neighbours she supplied, the photo evidence of the size of the hail and the fact that half of Clifton was pelted by hail much bigger than 15mm in diameter that night.
You might be forgiven for scratching your head given that there was a Suncorp Insurance van parked across the road from the council chambers for a good few weeks.
Could this forensic fraud investigator not have forensically investigated Suncorp’s own claims records from the same area/date/event?
The panel beater quoted repairs at $20,000.
Suncorp has offered to pay Lola out to the sum of $1937.92 for repairs.
Lola was left devastated.
“As if I’d damage my beautiful car I’d worked so hard for,” she told The Clifton Courier.
Lola has taken her case to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) to challenge Suncorp’s findings.
“Suncorp uses qualified forensic mechanics to carry out detailed investigations whenever required. These assessments are used to verify the validity of claims and assist in determining appropriate settlements,” a Suncorp spokesperson said.
