B.C. tradesman fights ICBC over specialized gear wrecked in crash

A Lower Mainland business owner says he’s lost days of work and potentially thousands of dollars due to ICBC’s no-fault insurance.

“It’s been extremely stressful on me and my family and it’s unfortunate,” Michael Frass told Global News.

Frass’ work van was totalled in a recent collision caused by another driver.

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ICBC wrote the van off, and offered him $24,000 towards a replacement, he said.

But Frass, who is a gas installer, said there was another $15,000 worth of custom shelving and other specialized equipment in the vehicle.

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He said ICBC has offered him just $3,000 for those losses, and wouldn’t let him keep the materials from the wrecked van. It’s a claim the public insurer disputes.

“We understand he has some specialized equipment inside the van so we have given him the option to uninstall that equipment himself and keep it and possibly put it into a new vehicle,” ICBC spokesperson Greg Harper told Global News.

But Frass said that’s not what ICBC told him, pointing to an email from the insurer which reads, “There is no option to rescind the vehicle ownership.”

ICBC later said there had been a miscommunication.

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“(I’m) pretty angry, it has been pretty stressful the last two and a half weeks,” he said.

“I’ve been unable to work for about 10 days, to do my job properly, because I had to buy a brand-new work vehicle and get it outfitted with the new shelving inside of it.”

It remains undetermined if ICBC will cover his lost wages. The insurer has requested Frass’s last three years of financial statements.

“To me, the system is broken if something like this happens, where I’m not at fault at all but I’m the one really losing in the end,” he said.

Frass said the experience has prompted him to purchase private insurance for his new van in addition to mandatory basic coverage through ICBC.