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

[whydoieven]

I was involved in a road traffic accident just over week ago (Wednesday 13th) where I was at no fault.

The garage (through the insurance) couldn't pick up till Tuesday (19th). I have cover where I get a courtesy car. When I phoned to update the insurance on Thursday (14th) to say I will need a courtesy car on the Tuesday(19th) they practically threw the car at me to take it the next day (15th). I said my car was still drivable (hardly any damage) and I didn't need it, but in the end I relented.

Because it was such an odd conversation, I started investigating. It turns out that I didn't get a courtesy car, I got a credit hire car, which the "courtesy car" company confirmed yesterday.

I had no idea that my contract is with the hire company. This means that if the other party's insurance objects to the money they have to pay out because of my costs, I am liable for the hire costs if they decide to pursue it. The credit hire means that the hire car can cost £££ per day and it all mounts up. Especially, as I didn't get given a compact car like I expected and my own car is expected to take 3 weeks. I feel like my insurance company, the car hire company and the garage are making money from this, but ultimately I am liable.

AIBU - you should know that courtesy cars can be credit hire cars.
YANBU - it's a racket

Except they can refuse to pay. In my relative's case they refused because the cost of the hire car which was pushed at him (like for like as his own) and time the insurance company spent at this end was in their view 'excessive'. So they just never paid!

Churchill and auxillis here too.

Other drive wrote off both his and our car and got done for careless driving by the police.

Meanwhile we got offered a hire car by our insurers, which we accepted.

Other insurance company phoned and says to take their hire car instead as they'd only pay £12 a day for our car so any more of a bill from our insurers for our hire and we'd need to pay ourselves as they'd reject our claim.

We didn't know how much we were getting charged per day as it wasn't mentioned.

Ended up numerous back and forth emails and our insurers saying because we'd paid for legal cover they'd fight this.

But what if we hadn't paid for that? They'd have hit us with a big bill.

Shocking.

And as the car was written off we only got a week to source another car. Which was really difficult as it had under 20k and yet it was over ten years old in really good condition.

Not impressed. These companies should be wearing masks. Disgusting.

@DiscoBeat who were the insurance company? Horrendous for your relatives. Mine was Churchill.

Which insurance company was this? 😳

Thank you, I will do this if it happens again. I don't know my third party insurance tbh. I only know their reg number.

Mine did exactly the same thing and I only found out when the hire company got in touch to say the third party insurers had not responded to pay costs and to let me know the hire company were instructing solicitors.
It was absolutely routes to me as a 'courtesy car' and that's what it is in my insurance policy but when I phoned insurer to query they were very non plussed and just said 'that's how it's done' these days!

Thanks for this OP. I pay extra to get a courtesy car in my policy but clearly I shouldn't bother.

The whole car insurance system is dreadful. I drive a pretty old car but would probably get about £2500 if I sold it. A couple of years ago it had the catalytic converter stolen from the driveway of a family member's house where we were staying. The insurers wanted to write it off, even though we were able to find our own repairer who could repair it for around £500. The insurers wanted Copart to take it so we had to arrange for it to be towed back privately. I did get a courtesy car through the insurers. Luckily didn't end up having to pay extra but they would only supply it for 3 days when we really needed it longer.

It's all become so complicated and such a difficult system to navigate.

Well done for spotting this, I was told by my insurance company to contact a company called Kindertons for a courtesy car back in January and the issues from that are still dragging on. Like you I was never told this at all and didn't realise until Kindertons started harassing me months later that there were any issues! I'm currently considering sending them a Letter Before Action about this.

PS my insurance company was Swinton if any one wants to add it to their avoid list

That’s different. They will always take it with a tow truck. They don’t want to be adding mileage and risk to your car - they may crash it etc and it’s easier logistically. He can take yours and do the next drop without needing a lift. When it gets to Copart, they’ll use a fork lift to move it about the yard. Obviously this can cause further damage. To Copart, driveable simply means pulls forwards on its on steam.

I imagine this will be uneconomical to repair. The problem being that all these costs also go into claim. I once had a Bentley with small damage but due to the Covid parts shortage and the cost of the replacement vehicle was extortionate, this car was written off as it was cheaper for the ins co.

Not an advert! Avoid them all apart from LV and trinity.

There is no way it was made clear to me by my insurance company that my claim was being handed over to some sort of claim management company. The conversation was something like “you’re entitled to a courtesy car, you’ll get a phone call from x and they will arrange this”. Literally that. You just assume that the insurance company have delegated that side of things as they don’t actually have their own courtesy cars at Aviva or whoever. But was very much under the impression that it was free/no risk of a bill/part of my insurance package. Felt like a total scam.

This happened to me as well - an accident caused by a BT van the day before the school year started 200 miles away from home. I needed a car to get back!

Eventually got the call to say they wanted my bank statements because BT said I could afford to pay myself. Told them to fuck off, never heard from them again. Sounds like I was very lucky, from some of the stories here.

I don’t understand the logic about people having to supply bank statements to prove they couldn’t afford to pay themselves.

I mean, the who thing is a disgraceful scam, but that part isn’t even logical. So what if you could afford to pay yourself? If it was a no fault claim, and the insurer has arranged to have the car provided, often after the consumer having paid additional on the policy for that service, why then should there be an argument that the consumer could have afforded to pay it themselves?

Our insurance tried to pass us off to Enterprise to manage the claim. I spent a morning arguing with an unpleasant customer service rep telling her I will not deal with any 3rd party who are clearly on the make. Told her my policy is with them and I will only deal with them. Eventually they allowed us to do the car repair through our local garage without extra charge (there was a fee if we didn't want to use Enterprise which I told them to get stuffed on). It should be illegal.

Most times it works out fine for the customer of the CH firm but even if it's OK for them it's a hugely dysfunctional system which bumps up costs and premiums. All the insurers have got addicted to this system, whereby instead of just managing claims in the most efficient way to keep costs low they offset their costs by getting kickbacks from third parties who charge inflated rates and reclaim from the other side.

It badly needs intervention from the regulators because any firm who tries to do the right thing and not engage will lose out.

It worked out fine for me financially in the end, but the stress it piled on me right after a quite nasty accident was horrible. It felt like I was trapped in an impossible corner

Another victim here! Few years back. Car went into back of me at lights. Very 'helpful' rep at my dealership passed me on to their 'independent claims handler'

Got given this massive top of range SUV I didn't even want (with the whole 'this is the only courtesy car available right now, lucky you') and clocked up a bill of several thousands as the work mysteriously took longer than planned despite being very simple .

Driver's insurance co queried excessive costs and was told it was going to court, I should appoint a barrister etc. majorly stressful. The law firm I was dealing with on my side turned out to have the same business address as the claims handler - SO dodgy!

Settled in the end without having to go to court, but I could have done without it. My partner said I obviously hadn't read the small print and fell for a scam too easily, but he wasn't there when the dealership we'd trusted for years sweet talked me and 100 per cent it would have happened to him too!

Your own insurance company will check the motor insurance database and tell you who the third party was insured with. Then you phone them, and give them the registration number and drivers' details, and they'll be able to trace the policy and can then start the claim process.

I think you're misunderstanding. In our cases, because we were dealing directly with the third party insurers, it was them who organised and paid for the hire car themselves, so not a matter of refunding anyone as they effectively "pre-agreed" the cost and provision of the car hire because they organised it themselves. Presumably they could keep control that way of the costs and car - it was the smallest/cheapest possible car, we had no choice! It was very time-limited, basically just as long as it took them to make a decision and five days after pay out after which time the car hire firm came to collect it. We didn't sign or agree anything other than to sign a sheet confirming the condition of the car upon delivery and how much petrol it had. At no point we were "On the hook" for anything.

Enterprise isn't actually a credit hire place like some of the places being referred to here. In fact, when these sorts of fees end up in court, the rates charged by credit hire companies are often reduced to those of companies like enterprise.

Credit hire has been the subject of significant scrutiny for years - well over a decade as it really is a racket. Certain 'law firms' were set up by the credit hire companies to purely recover credit hire costs.

Ultimately, there's a long standing requirement within insurance that the "victim" must mitigate their losses, so basically anyone asking for a bigger/better hire car than they need isn't "mitigating" the losses, they're basically taking the piss. Likewise it's arguable that if you've another car available (i.e. a two car family) then you may not actually "need" a replacement car at all if most of your journeys could be done by the other car, with just occasional taxi use if the times you needed a "second" car were few and far between.

It's just like if your home is damaged to the extent you can't live in it. You can't expect your insurance firm to put you up in a five star hotel or pay rent for a house much bigger than you need. They're only going to pay for bare essentials.

Or if your holiday luggage gets lost or stolen, you're only going to get insurance to pay out for your essentials whilst on holiday and basic standards, so more Next than Gucci!

So people thinking they can "get away with" a hire car far better/bigger than their own damaged one should really have given their head a wobble, however persuasive the hire company were.

We got referred to one of these credit hire firms once and I started to smell a rat when, on the phone, they asked whether we had another car we could use, whether we needed a hire car for work, etc., and then even more so when they texted/emailed the credit agreement which was quite clear that I'd have to pay their car hire charges if the insurance firm didn't pay them, and then showed the weekly rate to be stupidly high, something like £750 per week! I very quickly decided not to agree to those terms and phoned them back to cancel the car!

Labour announced in June that they would be tackling car insurance costs. I hope this racket comes into it. The MP for transport is Louise Haigh: members.parliament.uk/member/4473/contact
If anyone/ everyone caught up in this scam wants to contact her and share their story maybe Labour can outlaw it.

We were nearly caught by this but cancelled our claim in time as the accident (not my fault) resulted in only minor damage and I didn't want my lovely car written off (which they were going to do) and also have had previous experience of a third party denying responsibility in a hit and run.

that would be a courtesy car - credit hire different. Hence scam element as v. Unclear