Cancelled credit hire agreement, facing nearly £10k in charges. Has anyone successfully challenged this before?

[Goingroundthebend123]

Hi everyone, looking for advice from anyone who has dealt with On Hire, Winns Solicitors, Accident Management companies or Credit hire companies in the UK.

We had a non-fault accident and believed our insurer, Admiral, had referred us to a solicitor. We later discovered we’d actually called an accident management helpline and referred us to Winns Solicitors and have been given a credit hire car through On Hire, who hired it from Europcar. We thought it was a courtesy car and were reassured we wouldn’t have to pay anything if we weren’t at fault and cooperated with the claim. After being hounded to give bank statements at payslips at the end of last week, we became increasingly alarmed that our insurance company wouldn’t be asking for this and quickly realised our mistake. After researching credit hire horror stories and sleepless nights, we became worried about being pursued personally if the third-party insurer refused to pay (which is apparently common due to inflated car hire charges).

We’ve made the decision today, on day 13 of the 14-day cooling-off period, to cancel our contract with them, to stop the costs escalating to a point we wouldn’t be able to recover from should this process go on and on for months/years.

We have been told our cancellation charges are:

• Engineer/estimate: £203.50 plus VAT
• Storage: £48 per day plus VAT
• Hire charges to date: £8,534.40

We could be facing nearly £10,000, which we simply cannot afford.

Our original intention after researching online, was to pay reasonable costs genuinely incurred by OnHire as Europcar’s online rate for the same car is £82 per day and the garage also told us their storage rate is £15 per day. When we returned the car to Europcar and explaining our station/distress they kindly showed us the invoice from themselves to OnHire and the rate is £580 per day! These figures seem outrageous!

We are planning to complain to the financial ombudsman about the accident management helpline referral, as we genuinely believed it was connected to Admiral but wondering if anyone has had any luck with this route for redress of compensation?

We’re not trying to avoid legitimate costs as we did have use of a car for 12 days, but we never knowingly agreed to this level of financial risk. I’m pregnant, incredibly stressed and we simply don’t have £10,000 to pay!

Does it say anything in the paperwork you signed for insurance? Does it mention the criteria for referral and possible charges?

We didn’t use our insurers in anyway so there is no paperwork from them. We have signed all the paperwork relating to instructing the solicitors, receiving the hire car etc. it was all sent over on WhatsApp while we were on the phone and told to sign asap to get the claim underway. Admittedly we didn’t read all 11 pages as we repeatedly asked if it was going to cost us anything and kept being told “as long as it wasn’t your fault then no”. Turns out that’s not strictly in the fine print 😢 yes I know we’ve been totally stupid.

Might be worth trying to search with AI to see if it can come up with a solution. Fingers crossed you can sort it.

Did you speak to Admiral at all?

This sounds really stressful.

Thank you! This is how we came to the conclusion if you cancel within the 14 day cooling off period, technically any “contractual” charges are unenforceable however “reasonable” costs incurred can be enforced. We thought, brilliant we will offer them 1k to make it all go away (it would have been worth it for the peace of mind), however finding out today from Europcar that the actual costs incurred by the hire company are £580 day we’re absolutely beside ourselves.

We initially tried to hand back the car and continue with the claim through them for the vehicle damage, as the hire car seems to be where most of the disputes and liabilities come from. They rather intimidatingly told us if we gave back the hire car then it would be hard for them to prove in court that we ever needed it and be even more likely to turn the charges back on us! We needed a “valid” reason why we needed the car for the initial 12 days and no longer. My partner told them the “valid reason” was he didn’t want to be liable for that amount of money and would rather walk everywhere and they said it wasn’t good enough!

Oh this sounds really shitty OP.

I don't understand how it can cost so much for 12 days.

OnHire sounds like a total scam and Admiral seem to be in on it as they referred you.

How and why do companies get away with this crap in this day and age?!

Copilot says:
Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, any charge must be transparent, justified, and reflect a genuine cost. Unexplained or inflated fees may be considered unfair contract terms and therefore unenforceable.

Don't panic, all is not decided yet
Do you have any legal cover with your insurance policy? They would be my first call.

How awful. No experience of this but this is unethical behaviour by the insurers who have deliberately misled you here. Also try complaining to the Financial Conduct Authority. Good luck

Yes we have now spoken with Admiral who advised us this happens a lot, they have a dedicated webpage explaining to make sure you’re calling them etc. We just feel so stupid but straight after the accident you’re not thinking straight.

Admiral have now taken over the claim and have agreed to hurry it along and collect the vehicle from the garage (which is also 45 miles away!) so we can avoid any more storage fees. Sadly they can’t help with any of the costs incurred but we thought it was better to course correct now than see it through for months on end. Especially since we began to understand what had happened, I don’t think we would have faired very well in court being able to say we knew we messed up and carried on and let the bill rack up to thousands and thousands. The garage also confirmed to us they have a 28 day pause before being able to commence any work so we would have been looking at at least 35-40 days of hire fees! No wonder the 3rd party insurers tell them where to go when it makes it to court.

It is really really shitty!

sorry if unclear, it’s nothing to do with admiral… when you google “admiral accident phone number” other websites appear and in haste/panic/stress we called the first one at the top. We then said hello been in an accident etc, do you need our policy number? Nope just a reg blah blah… we assumed it was admiral but it was an independant 3rd party accident management helpline who then referred us to solicitor (which when we eventually spoke to admiral, they do also refer people to these services who can’t afford/don’t want to pay their excess) it just so happens we seem to have ended up with one of the shitty ones! Although technically we don’t know that, they could have won the case and we didn’t pay a penny but when you see the reviews/news article/forums about these companies, we just didn’t feel it was worth the risk, especially with a baby on the way. One man said they took him for over 60k and he lost his house!

Sorry, bit confused. Did you call Admirels originally, who suggested you called ‘the solicitors’, or did you phone an accident helpline number (and not the insurance company)?

(sorry it’s late, but sounds an awful situation)

edit - just seen update, so nothing to do with Admiral at all

Thank you! The worry now is the £580 day is genuine as it’s what Europcar have charged OnHire for the rental of the car and they will now want to pass those costs on to us 😢

Turns out we also don’t have the legal cover (I didn’t know this was an option) but I’ve now added it for future although it doesn’t help us now.

oh this sounds awful, how did you end up calling this company in the first place? If they weren’t through Admiral? If they are fraudulently advertising then that may also be in your favour?

Thought we were on the phone to admiral but was an accident management line who didn’t say they were admiral, but didn’t course correct when we were talking to them as if they were admiral. Offering to give policy details etc. when we got through to solicitors we said “oh admiral have passed us to you” etc.

Have you got legal
cover under your house insurance
which you may be able to use?

If you google “admiral claims” “admiral accident” anything along those lines their number appears first. I know, I know, how stupid are we. 😢 when you speak to them they say “hi it’s the accident claim line”, so we thought it was the admiral accident claim line”. Honestly it’s eating me up, i guess technically it isn’t a “scam”, they offer a service and we signed up to it just completely unaware of all the information.

I think we do have legal cover with the house yes! I remember going big on the house insurance and paying for the platinum ++ with all bells and whistles, also through admiral. I will speak to them tomorrow, thank you thank you!

Googled this and clicked the second option, in a stressed state scan read and probably assumed the first one was an ad but not the second one 😫

I think it’s wrong of Google to allow sponsored web pages to appear at the top of searches. It happens all the time with everything - the first 1 or 2 websites are not what you actually googled. And if you’re in a hurry, especially stressed after a car accident, you just go for one of the top searches. It’s devious.

I would try taking your complaint via resolver. I have used them twice, once with a complaint against Vodafone and once with a 2Gether breakdown insurance. Both resolved in my favour.

www.resolver.co.uk/about

While I can’t comment on Europcar specifically, generally the hire costs are only technically genuine. While they might well be billing £580 per day, under a broader contact with the claims company there will be a rebate clause where they get e.g. £500 per day back, but because it will aggregate across all the vehicles it as some kind of volume incentive it still technically counts as a £580 per day hire.

Dirty business! Sorry OP.

How can anyone bring themselves to work in these companies knowing what they do to folk?

(and to be clear, I don’t work for them, I nearly got caught the same way as OP but fortunately realised early, then did some digging because I was shocked.)

This happened to me also, a few years ago. I thought I was calling First Direct, my insurance company.. we had signed the forms for a replacement car like you, being rushed on the phone.
They will try to claim this extortionate hire car fee from the other parties insurance. Feel free to PM me x