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

I had no choice in the car they hired on my behalf, I was told it was a like for like which probably would have been the case except car hire firms don’t rent out ten year old cars so I got a brand new version of my Q5.

I had a credit protection arrangement and was told that as long as I do everything asked of me I wouldn’t have to pay anything. I spent hours and hours and had to produce bank statements for every account and credit card I had to be produce in court, to prove that I wouldn’t have been able to afford it myself. But I could have, so in court the other side won on that count.

Thing is that I pay extra for a courtesy car so there would be no need for me to pay for it myself, I didn’t understand that I was no longer dealing with my insurance company / policy, so it never crossed my mind. My barrister said that people don’t understand what they’re signing because it’s written in legal jargon, you’re ‘sold’ it as something really helpful when you’re dealing with a really stressful thing.

I really don’t understand how they can get away with this. It’s immoral

So I contacted Churchill. They categorically confirmed that any costs would be paid by them if the third party insurance company disputed the no fault or disputed the car hire. They also said that while Auxilles was a claim management company, Churchill are using their hire car facilities only. Mmm 🤔

I made sure to ask if they had recorded the call and I recorded the call also. I will follow up with an email to confirm, and I will copy in CEO if I can find their email address.

Yes, I will contact the Transport minister, thank you @FiveFoxes

I'll contact Martin Lewis/Moneysavingexpert too, while I am at it.

Go you op!

No. I pay extra on my insurance for a “guaranteed hire car”. When provided it was from Auxilis, a credit hire company. Not a courtesy car at all.

I don’t understand the logic as to why people have been asked in court to prove they couldn’t afford it. That implies if you could afford it you would have to pay it.

Very wise and thank you for this thread. I shall do that if this ever happens to me again

Also good idea to draw to attention of MSE.

The logic is that as the victim you have the right to be put back in the position you were in: in this case with the use of a car, but you should do this in a reasonable and cost effective way, not taking the piss. So you shouldn't rent a chauffeur-driven limo, or take black cabs for your daily commute for example: a hire car is a more reasonable option.

Credit hire firms don't ask for payment until you've won your case against the perpetrator, and that's their justification for being so much more expensive than just ringing up Herz or Enterprise. But if you've got 500 quid in your bank account, or access to a credit card then the opposing side would argue that you should have just hired a car in the conventional way rather than going for more expensive credit hire option. It's all really complicated and there's a lot of case law.

By analogy, if my upstairs neighbour's bath overflows and the leak soaks my bed, then I can go and buy a new mattress for a thousand pounds and sue them for it. If I buy it on a high cost finance deal and expect them to pay an extra 300 for the interest then I'd expect pushback for why I made that choice and whether it was strictly necessary.

Bear in mind that the extra you might have paid for a courtesy car was paid to your insurer. The company who's paying for the credit hire vehicle is the other insurer.

I had this too last year. I refused to accept the car & managed, but it felt very dodgy

I've got a bee in my bonnet. 🐝

Oh my goodness, I was not aware of this at all. When buying insurance I always ignore the random insurance companies instead going for a recognised name. This has probably been of no benefit.

But the problem is that people are being made to feel by their insurer that this is their only, and a reasonable option.

It's not like you are given any other options.
(Other than fund it yourself, but of course you have already paid for courtesy car cover so that would make no sense)

I quite agree that in practice it's not being presented to the victim appropriately, but the perpetrator's insurers would argue that that's not their fault. It's a mess.

Believe me the garages get absolutely nothing from credit hires apart from constant phone calls. In fact garages pay the insurance companies for the privelege of having the repair deployed to them

I had my hire car for about a week and it would have cost over £1k for that length of time. A year later the other person who was at fault still hadn't paid up. I told my insurance company from the start I didn't have the money to pay for it and haven't been asked.

The whole courtesy car thing is an absolute racket and as for the claims management side of it.

We had a courtesy car whilst they took our car away and mended some scratches on it.
We'd have been happy with some money on an Uber account for a weeks worth of minor journeys as we don't actually use it for work. But instead it cost the idiot-reserver a lot of money. But that wasn't an option.
Our idiot-reverse also tried to pull the "it wasn't me driving it I was at home miles away" ... and unfortunately for him when I finally got to the bottom of the reason for delays I sent the insurers the remaining photos of the incident which solved the problem. I like to think someone from the insurance company rocked up at his house and confirmed his ID and showed him a photo of him stood looking at our car whilst saying "gotcha".

Always take photos of the scene and people there when you have an accident.

We've shared dashcam footage recently with the police of an incident. It made it easier for the poor bloke who has his (courtesy) car smashed to bits. I dread to think how much of a nightmare his life was beyond his foot injury dealing with this second accident in a short space of time.

By analogy, if my upstairs neighbour's bath overflows and the leak soaks my bed, then I can go and buy a new mattress for a thousand pounds and sue them for it. If I buy it on a high cost finance deal and expect them to pay an extra 300 for the interest then I'd expect pushback for why I made that choice and whether it was strictly necessary.

That's a bit of a false analogy. The equivalent would be their insurance company dropping off a Barker and Stonehouse bed as a replacement and then saying afterwards that you have to pay the difference between that and an Argos basics one, even though you just wanted your Silentnight divan replacing.

Then complain to them.

That’s exactly it. Credit hire costs difficult for the CMC to reclaim in the absence of impecuniosity.

No, because it's not their insurer pushing the extra cost onto you, it's your own insurer.

If your own insurer gave you a five grand mattress to replace your ruined SilentNight and tried to reclaim the cost from your neighbour he would rightly tell them to sod off.

Ok change it to 'your insurance company ' then.

But the relationship between you and your insurance company and the CMC/credit hire company is none of the other side's concern. The other side's insurers are only liable to pay a reasonable amount to compensate your loss. The fact that the murky web of companies surrounding your claim are trying to take a cut is arguably not their problem. It's all a terrible mess.

Yeh it's awful, we had the same. Felt very much tricked into something that we would never knowingly have agreed to, and then forced to send on all our bank statements, pay slips etc to avoid a massive bill ourselves. Totally wrong.

@whydoieven thanks for starting this post and for people adding comments

i like to think I’m pretty clued up on Insurance but wasn’t aware of this. It's quite shocking. I'll be making people aware if they have to make a claim

There was a High Court case recently which ruled that car dealers are required to inform their customers of any "nice little earners" they are up to with finance companies. Basically they are going to have to repay a fucktonne of commission to customers.

I wonder if these disguised car hire schemes could fall into the same category. The OP has basically been dragooned into signing up for a credit agreement without the customer safeguard checks the FCA requires.

It's basically (yet) another PPI scandal waiting to be resolved.

Maybe move this to legal ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2l9vvj097lo

Surely there's a difference between a curtesy car & a hire car?
By calling it a curtesy car that would imply free as they are letting you use it as a curtesy while yours in being repaired?
Surely that's illegal although I'm guessing buried in their t&Cs it says they use the term curtesy car when they mean hire car.

Surely there's a difference between a courtesy car & a hire car?

Night and day. Hence the suggestion the OP was effectively missold a credit agreement. Which means it can be cancelled as they were not properly advised.