Car repair after accident - scam?

[thinkhorse]

Someone ran into the back of my car while I was stationary last week. My car had relatively minor damage to the bumper and tailgate, still completely drive-able. It's been in the garage since Tuesday, and I have a hire car. The insurance have just got back to me to say they have assessed it, approved the work and ordered the parts, and they estimate it will take a month to fix it.

I'm gobsmacked that it's estimated to be so long, it's likely not to be more than one or two days work involved. Meanwhile I'm driving a hire car which is obviously needing paid for and the insurance will try and recover from the person who crashed into me.

Am unreasonable to think that I'd prefer to drive my own car around and have a hire car just for the short period it's being repaired? I've had the hire car for 4 days now and nothing has happened to my car yet at all, it's just sitting in some garage car park. It's a complete waste of money me having a hire car for a month for no reason - this seems like a completely unjustified length of time to have a hire care and try and claim from someone else?!

Ask the garage for your car back,and tell them you'll bring it back when they have the parts and time to repair it.
i think car hire involving insurance companies is a bit of a scam at the minute.

So you're paying the hire?! Does the insurance company not provide a courtesy car? Is that not still a thing?

Are you going through your insurer or have they passed you to a claims handling company? There was a thread on here recently-ish about claims handling companies taking ages to get repairs sorted and possibly inflating the severity of the repair, making people keep the hire car for longer. Definitely has the whiff of scam / unscrupulous dealings.

The insurance has passed it to a claims handling company who are paying for the hire car and intend to claim that back from the person who crashed into me apparently. I think I read something on here a while ago which is why it's got me questioning it.

it does seem like an inflated cost which I'm not happy about colluding with, there is absolutely no need for me to have another car while mine sits in someone's car park. Plus the car they have hired for me is rubbish and doesn't really suit my needs, I'd prefer to have my own car until it's going to be actually worked on.

I had this when someone went into the back of me a couple of years ago.

I ended up skipping my insurers and dealing with theirs directly. They happily organised a courtesy car and made sure my car was fixed and back with me in just over a week.

That's quite a long time to expect parts for. Do you have a less common vehicle make or rare model?

Have they told you it's going to take a day or two or is that your estimation?

It could be a bigger job than that and they don't have the available hours to do it for a while. But even so, a month sounds excessive.

Have they said whether it's drivable?

I think this was thr thread spacemonkey71

Have a read OP and see if it is like your situation.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5214973-to-think-that-a-courtesy-car-should-not-be-a-hidden-credit-hire-car www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5214973-to-think-that-a-courtesy-car-should-not-be-a-hidden-credit-hire-car]]]]

You have obviously signed a credit hire agreement. The accident management company will try and maximise the hire claim. No doubt they will produce an engineers report that states your vehicle is undrivable. The third party insurance company will dispute the amount of the hire claim, and it will take ages to resolve, and the possibility of you attending court.

Credit hire is one big scam!

My son’s car took about a month to repair after an accident, it was waiting on the parts coming, that took about 4 weeks and it was less than a week to repair and respray.

he did not have a hire car.

I've got a fairly mainstream car, completely understand it could take a while to get parts. It's totally drivable - it has some scratches and bumps on the rear bumper but that's all.

I’m in the same situation

I took my car in for assessment, then got it back while they waited for parts,
then it goes in for 4 days and I have a hire car for that time

which makes a bit more sense

There's a massive issue getting spare parts for cars. It's part of the reason that car insurances are going up as a consequence of longer periods of requiring hire cars whilst waiting for repairs.

I wanted some spark plugs for my car a few months ago and they had a 10 day lead time on delivery!

Your own insurance company should be dealing with this. Do you have a courtesy car as part of your policy?
If so then you shouldn’t need to have a hire car. Id hand it back and say you wish to only deal with your own insurance company, not the claims handling company. There’s been a lot of bad press on here about this.
Ive refused to deal with one of these companies in the past as I already had courtesy car cover in my policy, and so my insurance co dealt with it all themselves.

They tried the parts argument with mine when someone did the same. It was a peugeot 2008 so hardly rare or unusual

Do you know if they've already ordered these parts?

I'd speak to them and say you'd like to continue driving it until the repair is actually scheduled. I imagine they don't want it blocking up space their garage either.

If you stick with the claims company / hire car you’ll probably need also to pay an indemnity fee (£100 or so) so that if it goes to court and you lose you’re not faced with the massive bill for the hire car you didn’t want or need. All part of the scam. I went through all this and only realised what had gone on when I read that thread which has now helpfully been linked to up thread.

Some boy racer nugget ran into the back of ours in 2019. The insurance gave us an Audi, at nearly £400 a day! We had it for almost 2 months, then they found out that he wasn't insured.

(Driving on a delivery plate).

They took the car away and wrote ours of the next day! We had to go through weeks of stress, proving that we hadn't the funds to have paid for it ourselves. You can rent a mid range car for under £300 a week.

Just coming back to thank everyone for the advice. I called the claims handling company and said I'd prefer to drive my own car while the garage is waiting for parts to arrive, and that a hire care is unnecessary when my car is driveable. The upshot is that I am going to collect it this afternoon and drop the hire car off, and they have explained how to arrange a hire car for when the parts have come in and it's actually booked for repair.

the garage explained that it's having a new bumper, they checked it for any other damage behind the bumper and it's fine so it was really completely unnecessary for me to have the hire car. Hopefully this will
avoid any issues in the future.

What a total scam, no wonder car insurance is so expensive with all this claiming for things that aren't needed going on.

I'm glad you got it sorted. It didn't sound like it needed to be sat idle waiting for parts, so it makes sense to carry on driving it.

Well done for managing to get your car back.

my car was hit last year, 2 doors dented but still drivable, it stayed at the garage for 3 months whilst I had a hire car. The garage kept saying parts are in next week and enterprise pretty much implied if I returned the hire car I wouldnt get another one when the repairs were done, so 3 months!!! and then obviously enterprise tried to charge me for tyre damage and scratches - fortunately I’d videoed the car when I collected it - absolute scammers

This happend all the time, the whole insurance thing is a complete farce and just a way of making money. They will be charging the insurance company for the storage of your car and also an exorbitant amount for the hire car.

My husband owns a paintwork repair company and made enquiries about winning contracts for insurers but was told he would have to keep all cars for a minimum of a week even though most jobs can be done in a few hours. 🤬

Is the bumper damage an mot failure? If there was another driver to blame you might be able to reclaim costs from their insurer

It'll only be an MOT failure if there are bits sticking out unsecured or sharp edges that could hurt someone. If it's dented badly, that's cosmetic and wouldn't be considered in an MOT.

I actually passed my driving test in a car that had been rear ended a couple of weeks before.

The whole thing will be recovered from the other driver, they crashed into the back of me while I was stopped and indicating waiting to turn.

The bumper is damaged, but you probably wouldn't even notice unless you looked closely at it, so not a mot issue.

Yeah that's not surprising, it seems like a completely open secret that this goes on, outrageous.