Refusal to provide a replacement/courtesy car after accident

Scott1970

On Friday I was in a 3 car accident. I was shunted from behind into a car in front but the van that hit me in the rear drove off before anyone could get any details. The significance being that my insurers will not provide me with either a replacement car or courtesy car in spite of having the provision on my fully comp insurance!! Is this correct or are they just avoiding paying for the hire?
I am now stuck in a village with no bus service and potentially a 3 week wait for the settlement fee for writing off my enabling me purchase a new vehicle!!

InsideInsurance

The terms of your policy will state what courtesy or hire car option you've paid for. Presumably you bought one without cover for it.

You can normally get round this by going to a garage of your own choice that provides courtesy cars but if your cars undrivable and was recovered to a garage of their choice you're stuck with your policy terms.

If the third party could be identified then you'd have the option of credit hire but this is claimed directly from the third party/ their insurers and clearly no one is going to risk giving you a car on credit if no one knows who the at fault party is to claim from

Aretnap

What exactly do your terms and conditions say about a replacement car? Often the car isn't provided by the insurer themselves, but by the garage that's doing the repairs. If the car is obviously a write off and the garage isn't actually repairing it, there'd be no courtesy car in that scenario.

If the car's clearly going to be a write off and you don;t have cover for a replacement vehicle in these circumstances then you're left with the choice of getting by without a car (taxis?), hiring/borrowing a car yourself for a couple of weeks, or getting a new car on finance or borrowing the money until you get the settlement.

dl5543

Sorry to hear this! Many insurance companies have a canny way of getting out of doing things.

I presume you've read all the T's & C's and can't find anything in there?

Good Luck anyway - hope you get sorted.

dl5543

Was there any CCTV in the area that could identify the vehicle that drove off?

InsideInsurance

dl5543 wrote: »

Sorry to hear this! Many insurance companies have a canny way of getting out of doing things.

You mean they cut out courtesy car cover to cut £10 a year off the price and get higher up the aggregator price list because someone will switch insurers to save 10p let alone £10?

Not really canny, fairly basic business sense. Someone wants to buy at the absolute cheapest price? You cut everything you can out to get it in as cheap as possible.

Its what customers want at the point of sale, only afterwards do people realise that cheapest isnt best.

dacouch

InsideInsurance wrote: »

The terms of your policy will state what courtesy or hire car option you've paid for. Presumably you bought one without cover for it.

You can normally get round this by going to a garage of your own choice that provides courtesy cars but if your cars undrivable and was recovered to a garage of their choice you're stuck with your policy terms.

The OP's car is a write off

keith1950

Hi, as previously explained ,a courtesy car is normally supplied by the garage doing the repairs "when it goes in to be repaired, if its a write off it ain't going to be repaired !

So the question is......did you have " hire car " cover.

If so you would normally get the hire car the same day or possibly the next day after the accident.

It would appear that you didn't have hire car cover.....check your policy details.

forgotmyname

Same here. I didnt bother paying extra for a courtesy car. If my car is being repaired i will get one but if its a writeoff then no car will be supplied.

It didnt bother me and not worth paying extra for because if my car was a write off i would just buy another and then let the insurance settle up later.

InsideInsurance

dacouch wrote: »

The OP's car is a write off

Didnt spot that it had already been declared a total loss. So yes, courtesy car and the work around wont work in this case and so its a simple case of did you pay for hire car cover or is the TP identified to use credit hire