Van hire insurance excess problem

Heidiann_2

Hi!

I hired a van to move house back in February. On leaving our old home I drove out onto the main road and stalled the van. As I was starting up again a delivery lorry came around the corner at speed and clipped the end of the van. We were fine and barely knew we'd be hit - I was more worrying about sitting across the main road! Anyway, the lorry driver was injured - his wing mirror had hit us and then smashed his side window as it rebounded, showering him (forcibly) with glass. Police and paramedics were called, the lorry driver was taken home as he was so shaken. The police were happy that it was a 'no fault' accident as far as they were concerned - no law had been broken.

When I returned the van we were asked to pay £750 excess which we were assured we'd have returned as we were not at fault. Additionally the van stalled regularly and apparently there was water in the diesel (we photographed the dashboard light that came up telling us this). There was also no accident pack or insurance details in the van which the police were none too impressed about...

Anyway, all these weeks later I've regularly called the hire company to be told they've not heard anything from the insurance company and the chap who deals with it was always out of the office and then broke his leg...So finally I managed to get the insurance firm details and called them....

And at last I got through to the person dealing with it. He told me date protection...blah, blah, blah...case all sorted. Go to Trading Standards or CAB....

I've been in touch with CAB and it's now logged with TS too. They've told me to write a stiff letter to the hire firm quoting unfair terms - I've looked at the small print and it says that regardless of fault ANY damage has to be paid for with £750 excess unless you take out their extra XS reducer - which we weren't offered anyway!


My question (at last!) - has anyone experienced similar, and if so, did you have any luck getting the money back?

Thanks if you made it this far!

InsideInsurance

The same applies to your own insurance. You are legally obliged to pay the excess even in non-fault accidents if you claim for your own damage from your own insurance but then have a right of recovery from the Third Party (TP).

Insurers can choose to waive the excess if they feel confident of getting a full recovery from the TP/TPI but are under no obligation to do so. Normally with Car insurance they'd have tried to sell you Legal Expenses cover which covers the cost of a claims handler recovering this outlay for you along with any other uninsured losses you may have had (eg hire car, loss of earnings, injury etc)

Now assuming the damage to the vehicle is certainly over £750 (which to be honest anything more than a light scratch is going to be) then the application of the excess is fair and you need to pursue the lorry/ driver to get it back.

Heidiann_2

So do I make a claim on the lorry driver's insurance then? The police took all the details, so I could easily get them.
I stupidly thought that the insurance company would do this on my behalf....but never having been involved in any sort of accident before, I have no idea what the procedure is

Quentin

Yes. (Though the police aren't "bound" to give you those details)


If you hit a problem you can get the details via Askmid (free if you use a smartphone otherwise a £4 fee)

InsideInsurance

Heidiann wrote: »

So do I make a claim on the lorry driver's insurance then? The police took all the details, so I could easily get them.
I stupidly thought that the insurance company would do this on my behalf....but never having been involved in any sort of accident before, I have no idea what the procedure is

Insurance only covers what it says it will cover and the excess is a standard exclusion. This is why car insurers try to sell you legal expenses/ protection or uninsured loss recovery because the damage to your car is generally only one part of the claim and you will frequently have other elements to claim like injury or a hire car etc.

Police are not always that helpful, thankfully they do tend to be more helpful to private individuals that they will share non-personal details but to insurers/ solicitors etc they often refuse to give anything and instead "sell" their crime report (they evidently dont actually sell it but they do charge a pretty penny for it).

As above, if you have the vehicle reg you can get the insurance details yourself for a few quid from AskMID