Hire car agreement/courtsey car question

[tacticalx86]

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.

 

[tacticalx86]

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.

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.

 

[tacticalx86]

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.

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