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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think a courtesy car should fit a car seat in the back?

28 replies

minniebear · 11/01/2017 15:50

So my car was crashed into over Christmas, luckily over night so no one was injured-presumably someone skidded on the ice. It was we undriveable and taken to a garage. Following lots of backwardsing and forwardsing with Diamond (never, ever insure with them) I was eventually offered a hire car as the garage didn't have a courtesy car available.

So today the garage dropped off their courtesy car, and Diamond planned to have Enterprise take back the hire car, but The courtesy car was a little Toyota Aygo which didn't fit my two Dualfix car seats in the back. When I spoke to Diamond they said that they don't offer courtesy cars to suit clients' exact situations and don't claim the cars will fit car seats-So i asked what my one year old and two year old were supposed to do for transport and they blustered about but didn't answer.

Am I being unreasonable? None of this was my fault, but the driver of the other car didn't stop so I'll have to find the £200 excess.

OP posts:
minniebear · 11/01/2017 18:49

Follow The car seats need replacing? If they were in the car? Who do I contact for that? Is it the insurance company again?

It sucks that so many people have experienced this. I was totally naive and didn't even think of it when we arranged the insurance.

OP posts:
Cakescakescakes · 12/01/2017 15:58

Yes call your insurance company. They will give you an allowance towards car seats but be warned it won't cover the full cost if you have pricier seats. We got a £100 Halfords voucher when we had a crash even though we had a £250 isofix seat and had to pay the extra ourselves. Car seats should be replaced following any accident as you can't know if they have been damaged internally etc by the collision.

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 12/01/2017 16:13

We had an issue like this following a crash on our way on holiday, with a boot full of everything you need for a fortnight in a holiday cottage with three small children (quite a lot of it just fitted in round other things, not bagged up or packed properly), and two bikes on the roof of the car (the two on the back were written off in the crash).

We were hours from home and hours from our destination, and our insurers best offer for a courtesy car was a Vauxhall Corsa! For five of us, two on boosters (this was a long time ago - children were on boosters from about age 4), and one in a car seat.

When we said this was utterly unsuitable they huffed a bit and said 'well - you sort out something suitable and bill us!' - so we spent an hour ringing round - and as it was Saturday afternoon, we struggled to find anywhere open with a suitable car, and in the end, we had to schlep all the way from Retford to Newcastle airport on the train, with all the cases, gubbins and 2 bikes.

Dh had to wait for the recovery truck to pick up our car, so I took ds3, who was quite small, and a pile of stuff on the train, including a change of trains, and got a taxi to the airport to pick up the car and drive back into Newcastle to pick up dh and the other two dses from the station.

It was a total nightmare of a journey. However, huffiness apart, the insurers were pretty fair. They accepted we had to spend a night in a hotel, instead of driving on to our destination that night (it was gone 6pm by the time we were all reunited at Newcastle and we'd been on the go for 9 + hours so it wasn't safe for dh to drive on), and paid for that, the hire car and the new carrier for the bikes as well as replacing the destroyed bikes and repairing the car.

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