MSE News: Car insurance: Competition watchdog wants courtesy car charge cap

Former_MSE_Paloma

The competition watchdog wants to cap the cost of insurers providing courtesy cars in a bid to reduce motor premiums...

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Car insurance: Competition watchdog wants courtesy car charge cap



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OnanTheBarbarian

All this will do largely is help swell the profits of insurers as the fees for the credit hire cars are generally a reciprocal cycle whereby the insurers just cut each other's throats. On one occasion insurer A is the non-fault party insurer, so they refer their customer for hire, insurer B feels the pain of the hire charges. Insurer A gets a kickback for the referral. On another occasion, the situation is reversed.

If insurers got their act together more and were actually pro-active with their handling of claims instead of making entire claims offices redundant and offshoring the jobs to call centres in India, they would save a hell of a lot on claims expenditure.

Some insurers won't even accept calls from third parties (Markerstudy being one of them) so when you call them to tell them the meter is running into the red on the credit hire claim, you can't even speak with them to tell them to get a move on.

Dave_Willett

The information is incorrect. Courtesy Cars are given to policyholders free of charge and at no cost to the insurer neither. They are part of a contractual agreement the same as collection of the damaged vehicle, and delivery of the repaired vehicle, many add ons are bestowed on the repairer in return for volume work. The same applies to the hourly labour rate which has an average of between £28 and £30 per hour, a much reduced agreement for high investment.

The CMA have commented on Hire vehicles, a very different category of replacement vehicle. The CMA are looking to cap hire vehicle rates which is the agreement and facility given to the policyholder in the event of a none fault claim. The repairer community have no interaction in this whatsoever, it is the hire companies and the insurers who work with each other on this NOT THE REPAIRER.

OnanTheBarbarian

Radio 2 tonight, apparently the savings to the average policyholder from these proposed reforms will be about £3-£4.

expect to see record increases in insurer profits though.

Honestly, the British public continues to be mugged off by the insurer PR spin machine