Another Albany Assistance car crash query...

rev_henry

Its in their interests to drag it out as long as possible so they can make as much money as possible from the hire charges. Thanks for the info.

evocycles

Had lots of fun with Albany. My partner had non-fault accident in her car. Fully-comp protected with courtesy car. We're told Albany are the company Elephant use and there wasn't a choice. Receive paperwortk through including credit agreement. Not knowing what this was I searched online and saw it was a scam so we didn't sign it or return it, just the other paperwork.

At no point did we ever receive any other mailings from Albany. Anywhere had courtesy car whilst car was being repaired. Never shown any charges or signed any Albany paperwork.

Repair job was terrible and took ages fighting with Albany over the phone and after replacing front tyres several times and getting tracking independently set and an engineer sent to my partners workplace to assess the car they agreed to get the repair re-done at a place of our choice. All sorted we thinks. Now we get a pack from their solicitors saying the 3rd party is refusing the hire car charges so they need a statement from us.

most interesting is loads of photocopies of paperwork from Albany with my partners signature apparently on it! She most definitely ever signed the agreement and has never even seen the other documents.

The statement they want us to sign includes us admitting we needed to use a credit agreement as we couldn't afford the car hire. We could have easily afforded the car hire if need be but we were entiled to a courtesy car and never had this explained to us. We are meant to accept the car supplied was a like for like. It wasn't it was far lower spec than her car (a Fiat bravo hire car vs. Alfa Romeo Brera 2.4JTD).

We need to admit we were shown hire charges and agreed to them, we never did see them or the enclosed copy of hire form with charges and my partners signature whcih she never signed!

Lots of other things we are meant to agree to or amend as suitable.

Thing is we never signed the credit agreement. I found it was a scam so told her not to sign it and we posted the paperwork back without it! How can they get her signature o nit and hold her to it when we never signed it? How dodgy is that?

rev_henry

Very dodgy indeed. Does it actually resemble her signature? I.e. have they lifted it from somewhere, or just made one up? I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this...

Mr_Brownstone

A 'free' courtesy car will be an ABI GTA S1 car like a Toyota Yaris. If you own a BMW X5 for example, the whole purpose of credit hire is so you can get a similar vehicle. A free courtesy car wont be like for like.

COMBATT

trouble with albany they require my credit card details just in case i get a parking ticket and refuse to pay but surly that can not be legal to hold my details untill the hire is over its put a full stop in my claim procedings sounds so wrong to me and this claim bussiness is one money spinning sarger and should be stopped fumming is not the word can someone confirm if albany are pulling a fast one here

Christopher7

COMBATT wrote: »

trouble with albany they require my credit card details just in case i get a parking ticket and refuse to pay but surly that can not be legal to hold my details untill the hire is over its put a full stop in my claim procedings sounds so wrong to me and this claim bussiness is one money spinning sarger and should be stopped fumming is not the word can someone confirm if albany are pulling a fast one here

In a word No, how many times have you been to a restaurant, opened a tab and they took a swipe of your card, just in case you forgot to pay the bill.

patd1967

Christopher7 what restaurant do you go to where they swipe your credit card before you have your meal?

COMBATT

my thinking entirely so they must be acting illegaly so what is my next move ? co op are saying that i must use albany and have no other options eg find my own hired car and let them foot the bill

Christopher7

patd1967 wrote: »

Christopher7 what restaurant do you go to where they swipe your credit card before you have your meal?

Loads, I must have an untrustworthy face

Back to the point it's not illegal to pre authorise credit/debit cards.

Christopher7

COMBATT wrote: »

my thinking entirely so they must be acting illegaly so what is my next move ? co op are saying that i must use albany and have no other options eg find my own hired car and let them foot the bill

If you hired your own vehicle, you will find that other hire companies either pre authorise your card or they take a deposit.