Car rental period from insurance company

gerdo

Hello all,
My niece's car was vandalised and looks as if it will be written off. Her insurance company have given her a rental for 7 days however the insurance company are dragging their heels in even sending out an assessor.

It's been 6 days into the car rental and the assessor still hasn't been to see the car, so my niece cant start thinking about replacing her car until she knows how much the insurance company will giver her.

Can she insist that they extend the car rental period otherwise she's left with no car, which she needs to get to and from work?

I forgot to mention that her insurance is fully comp.

Quentin

Assuming her policy includes a free rental car after her car is involved in an incident making it unroadworthy, then read up on the policy conditions.

If they say she gets to keep the hire car till her car is fixed or a settlement paid she can "insist".

If not, then she could get on to them and ask for their help over this, and escalate it if she gets nowhere.

gerdo

Thanks, I asked her to re check her policy documents to see exactly what it said, I'll maybe take a look at the policy document myself.

InsideInsurance

Many of these "guaranteed courtesy car" type policies are for a fixed duration because they are hire cars rather than the garage having to give you a car whilst they repair yours. The benefit is that you get one even if yours is unrepairable but the down side is that the fixed duration may be insufficient for your needs.

First step as has already been suggested is to check the terms of her policy to ensure they are correctly being applied.

Is her own car drivable? If it is then its questionable why she has just left it at the garage and taken the hire car already though I accept some garages are a little vague about when the engineer from the insurer is next due in

gerdo

The car isnt drivable and I'm pretty sure it'll be written off. But really my concern is that even if they have a fixed length of time for the car rental, it's their fault that the car hasn't been assessed yet so should she be entitled to extend this period ?

rs65

You can try to get it extended but there will be no set period in which they have to inspect the car.

Quentin

gerdo wrote: »

... my concern is that even if they have a fixed length of time for the car rental, it's their fault that the car hasn't been assessed yet so should she be entitled to extend this period ?

As previously posted she is only "entitled" to the cover as shown in her policy.

If that says it isn't any longer, then she needs to tackle them over the length of time they are taking and see if they are prepared to help out.

This free car cover isn't standard, and if she didn't have it, maybe she would have made some noise about the poor service a little earlier???

InsideInsurance

gerdo wrote: »

it's their fault that the car hasn't been assessed yet so should she be entitled to extend this period ?

Is the car at one of their approved repairers or a repairer of your choice?

Insurers must act within a reasonable timescale, the challenge of cause is that reasonable isnt strictly defined.

Would obviously help to know the actual timeline of the claim but I'd have a guess the hire car is delivered the next day to the incident. The damaged car collected that day or the day after. The garage does its estimate the next day or possibly the day after that and send it to the insurer advising they think its a total loss. Most approved repairers are probably visited twice a week and so if you're unlucky and just missed the last visit its another 3.5 days wait and you've now hit the 6 days of hire.

You can certainly register a complaint to say you think its been excessive timescale but 6 days on the surface sounds getting into the upper end of acceptability but not massively excessive.

If its your own repairer that have the vehicle then things are more complex as it could be them causing the delay for which the insurer isnt liable and they'll only have engineer visits by appointment and inevitably these are less frequent