Courtesy car damage - am I liable?

vikingaero

Garages spend a huge amount on Insurance cover so it does not make sense for them to have a zero excess as the cost would be prohibitive. Most garages have excesses ranging from £500 to £2,500 which are designed to cover serious prangs - anything under can be repaired by them at cost in-house.

Unfortunately the car was damaged whilst under your care even though it was a stupid pheasant. Obviously you are not Chinese Jim otherwise you would have put the bird in your boot and eaten the stupid thing!

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

The last time I was offered a courtesy car by a garage I noted the £1000 excess and refused it. I'd had loads of issues with the car they'd sold me, so they waived the excess.

Basically if some scrote kicks the door in while you're not around, you'll be paying for it. Be warned.

TighterThanTwoCoatsOfPain

when i get a courtesy car from the garage i use its a £1000 xs which i reduce to £100 by paying £5 per day.... Always makes my !!! twitch until its safely returned!!

I only take them if i really need to...

Jimuth

Thanks for the replies. No, we didn't sign anything... the workshop part of the garage works normal business hours, so when we dropped off/picked up our car it was via the adjoining service station.

The reason why I don't think Swiftcover won't cover us is our insurance is only for our named clio (cheaper!) and doing a google for the situation brought up a few hits on the consumer forum where someone else was in a similar dilemma (but much worse as the garage were acting fradulently).

I'm going to see what the £££ damage is when I get the bill, but I'm also going to ask them what their policy is with courtesy cars. I shudder to think what may happened if it had been my missis driving and she'd swerved to avoid the bird and ended up rolling/wrapping around a tree. It just seems strange in today's litigious culture that any place wouldn't have this all covered.

As TighterThan says, "I only take them if I really need to..." and I have to say I agree.