Our car was in an accident and the insurance company arranged for it to be repaired at the garage they have the contract with. They also arranged that we can have the use of a courtesy car for the period of time it takes to repair the car.
We were told to leave the car in on the 30th (last Monday) and the garage advised they had all the parts and the car was going to be ready on Thursday. On Thursday the car was not ready. We had planned to go on a 12 day holiday, with our to the west coast of Ireland (from NI), so really needed car to leave on Friday afternoon. On Friday they kept promising car was “nearly ready” until they admitted at around 4 pm that it was not ready and they might need more parts. At that point we had resigned ourselves to having lost one day of our holidays and contacted the insurance company to ask for their suggestions of what to do.
The garage had advised the courtesy car was not insured for cross border travel. So the insurance company made sympathetic noises and suggested they would speak to the garage to ask if we could used the courtesy car and they would cover insurance - this was declined by the garage who said once our car was repaired we had to give back the courtesy car within a short time frame (they did offer to drive our car to the nearest border town which is nearly 2.5 hrs from where we are staying and which means we cannot plan anything as waiting for garage to phone). Option two was for insurance to arrange a hire car which would take three working days - so given that this conversation was had on Friday it was effectively shortening our holidays by five days.
So I decided to hire the smallest and cheapest hire car I can find for the entire holiday (£300 including cross border fees and second driver), load the kids in the car, leave and lodge a complaint with the insurance company.
So far I have asked them to cover the hire car as their proposals were unreasonable - they are saying no, offering £50 as a good will gesture due to stress and are suggesting I take case to the ombudsman.
I will do that but does anyone have any idea what my actual rights are here? So holiday already cut short by one day - and decision to hire car on second day was entirely my decision as alternatives so crap.