Free motor accident aftercare

optimist38

WH Smith Privilege Club are offerring free motor accident aftercare. They offer

• Recover your vehicle from the scene of the accident if it is undriveable

If the accident wasn't your fault, we will also:

[*]Repair your vehicle,
[*]Replace your vehicle on a like-for-like basis,
[*]Report your accident to your insurers,
[*]Recoup your losses, and
[*]Give you expert legal support

You have to sign up for them sending you offers but you can unsubscribe. It all seems too good to be true, does anyone have any experience of this?

hedgie67

I'm cautious to be honest. It would be interesting to see if anyone has any experience of this service.
It's run by Leeds based One1One.co.uk (One1One Accident Aftercare is a trading style of Litigation Indemnity Consultancy Limited) who get their income by recovering their fees from the person at fault in an accident.
Their site says:

"How are we able to do all this for you for free?

How do we make our money? Where's the catch??





Our service is based on tried and tested principles operated within the insurance industry for many years.

• At the heart of our service is the principle that we recover the cost of providing our service from the at-fault driver's insurers, not from you or your motor insurer.

• We make money in 2 ways:

• 
  - When a replacement vehicle is provided and our partners recover the cost of that vehicle from the at fault drivers insurers they pay us a commission.
  
  - When one of our members is injured in an accident and utilises our legal support service, the solicitors to whom we refer the claim - with the member's permission - pay us a referral fee. You will see that we also state this clearly on the Legal Support page of this website.

• The complete service we provide is very similar to services provided by insurers and brokers as an add-on to a policy of motor insurance. The difference is that insurers and brokers charge for their similar products and we do not."

I assume that if it's your fault, they recover your vehicle & take it to their favoured repairer (rather than the one recommended by your insurer) and get some form of commission from them. I'd guess that if this does not cover the cost recovery then they offset it against other peoples claims where they can indeed recover their costs from the at fault driver.

It's certainly legal, but a similar organisation - Manchester basd "The Accident Group" went bust in a very high profile way a couple of years ago, leaving lots of people stranded because their cars would not be released by repairers until the bill was paid. One1One are quite likely perfectly legit, and their service does looks very appealing, but before joining I'd like information from people who have used their service already.

dacouch

Hedgie67 your correct, they make their money from any injury claims or credit hires they come across and either deal with them in house or sell them on.

With regard to the repairs, the garages they typically used by these types of companies give them a discount of between 5% and 10% off the price which is there profit.