The ICBC Trojan Horse

Most of us will remember the tale from the Trojan War when the Greeks used a trick to win the war against the Trojans.  The Greeks had been laying siege to the City of Troy for ten years, and for ten years the Trojans had resisted. Finally, the Greek general came up with a clever plan. He built a huge wooden horse and left it on the battlefield. He then had his troops sail away.   The Trojans celebrated what they thought was a great victory and pulled the wooden horse into their city as a trophy.  The trick was revealed that night.  The Greeks had hid a force of elite soldiers inside the horse.  The soldiers, under cover of darkness, climbed out of the horse and opened the City gates to their comrades who had sailed back.  The Greeks slaughtered the Trojans, sacked their City and won the war. The Trojan horse is a metaphor for any trick or strategy used by somebody to achieve a goal that they could not achieve in a legitimate way.

Starting In the fall of 2013 and continuing into 2014, ICBC is  launching its Trojan Horse campaign to win the hearts and minds of consumers.  This is a multimillion dollar campaign. The past decades of outright aggression and intimidation hasn’t achieved the ICBC Master Plan of total control of consumers.  So, now they are rolling out the soft sell. What makes it even sweeter for ICBC is that they get to use your money for the campaign. That’s right – without your permission, they are using a chunk of the insurance premiums you pay for this campaign as opposed to using the funds to lower your premiums.

What is this campaign about? You may have already seen some of it. They are buying up ads on bus shelters and on buses.  They are going on the T.V. and on the radio. They are doing direct mail to consumers. They are even mailing out credit card size wallet cards for an “ICBC help line” in English and Punjabi. The scope and cost of the campaign is staggering.  They have one message: Trust us.  They want you to forget all the negative things  that you know about them, have heard about them or have read about them. They want to assure the public that they can be trusted to deal with you fairly. You don’t need to talk to a lawyer, they say. All you need to do is to trust us and you will be OK.

Here is a comparison. Let’s say that you are going through a divorce.  Your spouse has a lawyer and you don’t. Your spouse tells you that you don’t need a lawyer.  He or she tells you that you should forget about any past trust issues and that you should just trust him or her and his or her lawyer to be fair to you in the settlement. Would you believe it? Of course not. The notion would be ridiculous.  Well, this is exactly the bill of goods that ICBC is trying to sell you in this campaign.

As an intelligent consumer, you know better than to trust ICBC. You can see the Trojan horse – ICBC wants you to let down your guard to  allow them to carry out their agenda, which is to either destroy your claim or significantly minimize the value of your claim.  You haven’t forgotten the tricks ICBC plays – the recording of your phone calls, outright lying to you about witness statements, cutting you off treatment, trying to intimidate your doctors and therapists.  You remember the scandals – bonuses to adjustors and managers, bribes to repair shops and managers buying cars that had been written off. The tiger hasn’t changed its stripes.  This is the same ICBC that will spend thousands of dollars in following you around, speaking to your neighbors, infiltrating your Facebook, and every other dirty trick it can pull to avoid paying you what you deserve on your ICBC claim.

Don’t be fooled by this new ICBC campaign and don’t let your family members, neighbors, friends, acquaintances and co-workers be fooled. Spread the word. If you or somebody you know has been in a car accident, he or she needs to talk to a lawyer as early as possible after the accident. A lawyer can inform the car accident victim of his or her rights and give him or her the straight goods about the ICBC process.