To think that a courtesy car should not be a hidden credit hire car

I don't think it's just insurance companies involved in this scam. A few years ago DH had a minor prang with an acquaintance's car. It was very low speed, both cars were driveable afterwards and DH accepted fault. Acquaintance took his car to a 'repair centre' for assessment and quotes etc and they told him that they had 'an arrangement' with a company who would provide a car until the car was repaired or it was written off and they bought a replacement. They told him that all costs would be covered by insurance so not to worry and just enjoy a nice car for a while as a silver lining to having the inconvenience. We queried this as the damaged car had been an very basic, small, old car and the car they were given was an expensive sporty number, plus they were driving it for months despite the car having been written off almost immediately (due to low value). DH felt bad and even offered to pay for a basic hire car for him but acquaintance was convinced that it was all above board and standard practice that the insurance companies would pay for it all.

Our insurance company paid a small amount towards hire car costs but would not foot the full bill. Acquaintance's insurance company said it had not been approved by them and was not covered. He ended up with a bill for thousands of pounds and the company advised him to try to sue DH privately. Our insurance company dealt with this for us (on the basis that they had already agreed and paid for all our liability). Acquaintance did have to pay in the end and it put them in quite a difficult position.

I’ve just exactly this, it was fucking awful.

The barrister said to me on the date of the court case that everyone on the whole process except me is making money out of this process.

Someone needs to do something about this, it made me so stressed and ill.

Edited to add Auxillis here too.

Call both. Tell Churchill you want them to deal with it. After you have their response, call auxillis and say you were misled. You don't want them dealing with your claim. You will have signed something or given permission but say it wasn't explained to you properly and on that basis you do not give permission.

Your car (the one involved in the accident) will either have gone to a garage to be assessed or more likely, have been collected by Copart for them to complete the assessment as to whether it's a total loss/write off. Copart are a salvage agent who work with insurance companies and auction written off cars to traders (that's how the insurance get some money back) and they treat the cars exactly how you would expect a scrap yard to. They are not driven but moved by a forklift and once assessed they sit in a dusty space until resolved. This can be years. Some people buy the car back or discover it's not a total loss but the car comes back with much more damage than it left with.

Meant to say that the lady whose car I hit told her insurers that she could have paid for a hire car herself but was offered this car as a "courtesy" so assumed it was included in her insurance.

I had similar a few years back. I backed into another car, totally my fault, and the owner wanted it to go into the main dealership as it was fairly new. They, for some reason, sent it out to a bodyshop, who offered the owner a courtesy car then stalled and stalled so a relatively small repair took 3 weeks.
I assumed that the insurers had sorted everything but some months down the line got court papers saying the owner was suing me. She rang me later that day in a panic (we had exchanged numbers at the time and I was still in her phone) as she had also got court papers and had known nothing about it so rang the solicitor named in the letter. We found that our small bump (minor damage to bumper and back of rear wing) was now costing over £20k, largely due to the courtesy car.

It was settled the day before the court date but was stressful and infuriating as I suspect most of it was manufactured for profit

I had no idea. Thank you for this information. I’ll take it off my insurance. I can manage without a car if I need to so it’s not really worth it.

You may find this webpage from the financial ombudsman useful.

www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-can-help/insurance/motor-insurance/credit-hire-credit-repair-services-following-no-fault-accident

Yanbu. Someone went into the side of my dh car and he was shocked that to discover this. We didnt get one and won't get it in the policy now.

Thanks for the thread @whydoieven i was hit by a car in a hit and run earlier in the year (literally hit me and pinned me to my car but there was also damage to my car) my curtesy car it turns out is also one of these agreements, which came to just under £500 for 12 days.

Im really annoyed especially as this was via Motability insurance and I'm fairly sure this was never explained to me, the driver of the car who hit me wasn't insured so it'll be an interesting chat with my solicitor tomorrow

At some point during your call to your insurers you have agreed not to make a claim on your insurance policy but to instead allow a claims management company to deal with the claim.

You could call them up and tell them you no longer want to do this and instead you want to make a claim against your insurance policy. The problem will be that even if they agree to this you will now be liable for any costs incurred to date which will include the cost of the hire car.

On the other hand if the claims management company fails to recover their costs from the other driver you will be liable for even more money, which will include the hire car and the cost of any repairs to your car. Repairs which will be charged at massively inflated rate.

Ah yes - we've had this dispute ongoing now for 2 years as we had the 'courtesy' car for 5 weeks as they sent our car away to be sorted and it was charged out at something nuts- the other insurers ( and they were ones at fault) are disputing this charge ( it's around £5k !!!! And was a big standard average Vauxhall as opposed to our Volvo xc60 - my H now has to go to court about it - are you with yolo by any chance?

I had a similar story and the company was auxilis. I genuinely didn't understand the difference between being given a courtesy car from my insurance company (which is what I thought I had) & a credit hire car.

Turns out the other company refused to pay for my credit hire car as they said it was excessively expensive compared to a 'normal car that I could have hired myself'. It went nearly all the way to court before they finally agreed to pay it (mainly as I gave detailed statements about how it was my insurance company & the garage that caused me to have it for 10 days when the repair only took 2 rather than me wanting it that long).

It was awful. I was so stressed out, had to provide my bank statements to prove I couldn't have afforded to pay for a hire car myself in advance, book leave for the court date etc.

Auxillis are nothing short of a ponzi scheme & I would never accept them being involved again if I am unfortunate enough to be in an accident.

It was never made clear to me that my insurance company were passing me over to another company & I would be liable for any costs of they other side wouldn't pay them.

There needs to be some sort of investigation into the actions of companies like these as they are massively pushing up the costs of claims & we all pay for that in higher premiums.

This exact same thing happened to my son. He was threatened with court and bailiffs.
The legal dept of his own insurance company took it up on his behalf but it was a nightmare that lasted 2 years before it got eventually thrown out. Not before he was repeatedly threatened with a 10k bill 😡 He was only 23 at the time and absolutely traumatised.

I agree this is a total racket.

We had a situation a couple of years ago where someone reversed into our parked car. The damage was pretty minor bodywork stuff, with a repair cost of about £600 (got quotes).

Went through the insurance to get it sorted ... They said it would take multiple weeks and that we would need a courtesy car. Tried to say we didn't want it, but they insisted it was part of the process.

Two days later, we get an email that our car is a write off (category C) because the cost of the claim is higher than the value of the car. Never saw any courtesy car; our insurance was now void because the car was a write off, so couldn't drive it.

Like heck it was. And guess which company handled the process from then on? Auxilis.

So it's basically win-win for them. Either they rake in the money from the "courtesy" car or they get your totally functional car for cost price and get to mine it for parts and profit that way.

The whole thing is so dodgy.

You can call them and say you were misled and no longer want them handling your claim. If they're handling it your car will be at Copart. Don't get it back, take the loss and pay off.

Same thing happened to us last year, and guess what, it was Auxilis! Total cowboys!

we ended up in court as the other side queried it and it was so stressful. Of course when it got to that stage Auxilis disappeared and we were in a case which was a big insurance co vs us! Fucking scary. Worked out ok in the end after months of stress.

I know it’s my own fault for accepting the car but the Auxilis staff really trick you into the “courtesy” car and don’t make it clear at all.

I wish I had heard of this scam before. I wonder if Martin Lewis and MSE are onto it?

This is normal. I'm not saying it's right, just normal.

It's also just a safety net so if for some reason the insurance knocks it back, there's no financial loss to them. It would have to be a serious reason for them not to cover such as false claim or lying, crash for cash etc. It's not like people suggest where any small thing can stop them from paying out. They're heavily regulated. The issue is when you go through a claim management company. Avoid them as they're only out for themselves.

This shocked me. Luckily I didn't get charged but it was horribly stressful and I really felt like I had no choice and it felt like a nasty trick