Hire car agreement/courtsey car question

tacticalx86

tacticalx86

tacticalx86

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Posting this on behalf of a relative.

Before Christmas, their car was involved in an accident that wasnt' their fault. They were shunted to the rear when their vehicle was stationary.

They agreed to let the insurance company deal with it, with the relative making a claim against the third party's insurance. As part of my relative's insurance policy, he recieves a courtsey car.

However, because of a fault with the car management/accident repair company who were supposd to be in charge of recovery and repair of the vehicle my relative was driving, it was not processed for repair in their system for months. They were effectively leasing an expensive saloon car to my relative for the equivelant of £400 a day. It was around 30 days before the car was returned, meaning the person who caused the accident will be left with an incredulously high bill of £12,000. This results in the unlikely scenario of the courtsey car costing more than the actual damage, many, many times more in fact. For obvious reasons it seems like any reasonable person would not be paying £12k, so does that mean then my relative will be subject to pay? Or will the money be written off, due to the error of the company in not processing the vehicle. My relative called them every one of those 30 days and made a written record of the calls and the information recieved.
 
If it goes like the one my mum just went through the 3rd party insurance company will refuse to pay the hire car costs, accident management company takes them to court and shortly before the court case they agree a reduced charge for the hire car.

Your relative will have likely agreed in the T&Cs of the hire car that they won't be held liable for the charges if they can not recover the costs but will have to attend court if required to advise they needed the car.
 
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Dangerous Dave said:
If it goes like the one my mum just went through the 3rd party insurance company will refuse to pay the hire car costs, accident management company takes them to court and shortly before the court case they agree a reduced charge for the hire car.

Your relative will have likely agreed in the T&Cs of the hire car that they won't be held liable for the charges if they can not recover the costs but will have to attend court if required to advise they needed the car.
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He did need the car, though didn't use it much as he was afraid of damaging it, but he DID tell them he didn't mind what car they gave him and would have been happy with a low end model.
 
These ridiculously high charges made by these parasite companies hiring cars to insurance companies has to stop. They are basically making the cost up and asking for as blank cheque so it's no wonder everyones insurance is going sky high. There needs to be a lawfully set maximum they can charge based on actual hire costs.
 
Sister in law is stuck between insurance companies arguing over a £35k hire car bill when she was hit whilst stationary, it was delayed due to the availability of replacement parts and the 3rd party insurance are saying she shouldn’t have had the hire car for so long
 
Dangerous Dave said:
If it goes like the one my mum just went through the 3rd party insurance company will refuse to pay the hire car costs, accident management company takes them to court and shortly before the court case they agree a reduced charge for the hire car.

Your relative will have likely agreed in the T&Cs of the hire car that they won't be held liable for the charges if they can not recover the costs but will have to attend court if required to advise they needed the car.
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This

I've been in a similar situation and had to go to court, I wasn't liable but just served as a witness for the hire company.
 
Sounds like some insurance companies would be better off buying in cars to loan out, especially at £35k.

What would happen if you refused to attend court on behalf of one of these rip off merchants?
 
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hans gruber said:
Sounds like some insurance companies would be better off buying in cars to loan out, especially at £35k.
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They've mitigated it somewhat by having what are known as 'bilateral' agreements, whereby certain combination of insurers have agreements whereby they deploy hire cars more directly rather than referring to third parties, as they are better off doing this in aggregate across their whole book of claims than debating liability and third parties getting involved.

pastymuncher said:
These ridiculously high charges made by these parasite companies hiring cars to insurance companies has to stop. They are basically making the cost up and asking for as blank cheque so it's no wonder everyones insurance is going sky high. There needs to be a lawfully set maximum they can charge based on actual hire costs.
Click to expand...
It's genuinely shocking stuff and as mentioned has been going on too long. I used to work in this sector over 10 years ago and it's classic ambulance-chasing stuff, not just hire cars but personal injury parasites all wanting a piece of the action. Literally it's like a race for them to try and sign up the victim on whatever bandit scheme they are running before the at fault parties have a chance to react. What I find hard to fathom is how in a relatively heavily regulated industry (insurance) this sort of nonsense has been allowed to carry on. Of course, the insurers don't help themselves by farming all the backhanders for passing on the referrals in the first place - what goes around, comes around, but the end result is of course premiums have to cover the costs.
 
The insurance industry is full of scummy, cash-grabbing rip-off merchants and parasites.

The automotive industry is full of scummy, cash-grabbing rip-off merchants and parasites.

Unfortunately it's no surprise what happens when there's a crossover between the two :(
 
Dangerous Dave said:
If it goes like the one my mum just went through the 3rd party insurance company will refuse to pay the hire car costs, accident management company takes them to court and shortly before the court case they agree a reduced charge for the hire car.

Your relative will have likely agreed in the T&Cs of the hire car that they won't be held liable for the charges if they can not recover the costs but will have to attend court if required to advise they needed the car.
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Exactly what happened when I shunted a colleagues car in the work car park. Got a BMW 540 at £LOL per day to replace his motor. They then dragged their heals even getting the car looked at before finally writing the car off with a £1500 payout about 6 weeks later.

That took years to resolve with my colleague being called as a witness before the case was settled out of court at the 11th hour.
 
Dangerous Dave said:
If it goes like the one my mum just went through the 3rd party insurance company will refuse to pay the hire car costs, accident management company takes them to court and shortly before the court case they agree a reduced charge for the hire car.

Your relative will have likely agreed in the T&Cs of the hire car that they won't be held liable for the charges if they can not recover the costs but will have to attend court if required to advise they needed the car.
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providing the -accident management company- who provided the car was engaged by your insurer, are you guaranteed of that 'won't be held liable' clause,
or, do you have to 2nd guess it, and check with 3rd party insurer too that those costs will be acceptable.
 
This is why i refused to use the company my insurers wanted to me to use. (Auxilis).
Their T&C showed £350+ per day for car hire, and if they were unable to recover costs from the 3rd party, I'd be liable as it was all on a "credit" agreement.
This "credit" agreement is all the norm now.

I refused, and then they tried to pressure me into it.
In the end I contacted BMW Directly, who use Enterprise to do all the work. The Hire costs were a more reasonable £125 per day for a like for like car and I wasn't being held liable.
Total cost of repairs was just under 12k, and I had the hire car for two weeks. Car was valued at 18.5k by BMW (Trade price) so I was very suprised to hear it wasnt a Category N car when I got it back.
 
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HangTime said:
They've mitigated it somewhat by having what are known as 'bilateral' agreements, whereby certain combination of insurers have agreements whereby they deploy hire cars more directly rather than referring to third parties, as they are better off doing this in aggregate across their whole book of claims than debating liability and third parties getting involved.


It's genuinely shocking stuff and as mentioned has been going on too long. I used to work in this sector over 10 years ago and it's classic ambulance-chasing stuff, not just hire cars but personal injury parasites all wanting a piece of the action. Literally it's like a race for them to try and sign up the victim on whatever bandit scheme they are running before the at fault parties have a chance to react. What I find hard to fathom is how in a relatively heavily regulated industry (insurance) this sort of nonsense has been allowed to carry on. Of course, the insurers don't help themselves by farming all the backhanders for passing on the referrals in the first place - what goes around, comes around, but the end result is of course premiums have to cover the costs.
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Yep, this relative of mine got a call from the insurers asking him if he was sure he wasn't injured and if he wanted to put in a claim
 
Sirrel Squirrel said:
They come after you, I remember reading it when I signed the agreement, that was about 10 years ago now but I imagine that's the case still.
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got caught out the same way quite a while ago was offered a people carrier when ours had a bus run into it, it was a piccasso and luckily we gave it back after a month and bought a car to use while ours was sorted.
9 months after we asumed it was settled the hire company tried to take us to court for nearly 5k.
as said above got settled day before court but only after we pleaded poverty and paid the hire company a reduced 550 pounds.
never every using a management company again.
 
I agree with this. Have a similar story.

Inflated hire car costs. Problem for me was when I signed the credit agreement I was told I wouldn't be liable to pay the cost of the hire car unless :

a) I could have afforded the the hire car myself,
b) It was proven I didn't need it
c) I spoke directly to the 3rd party insurers
d) If it came to it, I'd need to go to court to evidence a,b,c.

Seemed all very safe, so I signed. My car was off the road for just over a month, so very big charges which the third party insurers didn't agree to pay. I was told it would have to go to court.

Problem was the company wanted ALL my bank and credit card statements etc (to prove I couldn't afford it).

This was at the time when banks were paying 0.1% interest on savings accounts. I had a Santander 123 account that was paying 3% on credit balances. I had put all my savings into that.

Of course, when they saw that I had over £40K in my "Current account", they started arguing that I could have afforded the hire car myself.

All got very messy, and was VERY stressful. But as previously mentioned, it got resolved before court proceedings at the 11th hour. I'd not touch anything like that again with a barge pole.
 
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jpaul said:
providing the -accident management company- who provided the car was engaged by your insurer, are you guaranteed of that 'won't be held liable' clause,
or, do you have to 2nd guess it, and check with 3rd party insurer too that those costs will be acceptable.
Click to expand...

With my mum's the agreement was with the management company providing the hire car that she was advised to use when she called her insurance company. They were good at explaining the situation and that alsong as she was willing to attend court to advise she needed the car she would not have to pay for it regardless of outcome. They did advise that it was likely to get settled before going to court, which it did I don't know what discount was agreed.

As it was only replacing a Fabia the original hire car costs weren't that high under £100 a day it was the time of the hire the 3rd party insurance were arguing over as it took 3 months to get parts. In the end the car should have been written off as it was sold for almost half the total claim a couple of months later as she was planning on replacing the car before it got hit.

Hire charges should be regulated as ultimately we all pay for these high costs in our insurance premiums. Car's are also getting written off which would have otherwise be repaired if it wasn't for the high hire car costs.
 
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I wonder - if the car accident were your fault, and, you had taken the 'loan of a car' option on your policy would the process of getting a loan car &bill settlement, be much simpler.

e: I've never selected that policy option - but, if regularly travelling abroad, might consider it.
 
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