Being chased for courtesy car costs

InsideInsurance

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

Its probably is not the case here, but in the event of accident, whoever might be obviously at fault or not (many people revise the story once away from the scene), the only courtesy car i would accept would be the basic little white goods thing usually supplied by accident repairers themselves, but preferably, as Strider above, i would avoid all such people and sort my own transport out for a week or two.

All well and good and this may work for you but if you have 5 kids and 3 dogs then a Corsa may not be big enough for you. Likewise having to pay for your own hire car for a week or two may be ok for most people but what if your car is off the road for 2 months? Not everyone can afford to pay for that length of hire out of their own pocket.

A large proportion of insurers do offer a policy upgrade to a enhanced or guaranteed hire car which is normally a larger car and may be a "like for like" and so if you've paid for this why not then use it?

Of cause it all ultimately comes down to knowing what you have under your policy and ensuring you know what you are getting. Insurers get a reasonable backhander for forwarding their customers details to credit hire companies and so may well suggest they forward your details to Albany, Helphire, Enterprise etc to help you out (in reality they are selling you to them)

gilbert_and_sullivan

InsideInsurance wrote: »

All well and good and this may work for you but if you have 5 kids and 3 dogs then a Corsa may not be big enough for you. Likewise having to pay for your own hire car for a week or two may be ok for most people but what if your car is off the road for 2 months? Not everyone can afford to pay for that length of hire out of their own pocket.

A large proportion of insurers do offer a policy upgrade to a enhanced or guaranteed hire car which is normally a larger car and may be a "like for like" and so if you've paid for this why not then use it?

Of cause it all ultimately comes down to knowing what you have under your policy and ensuring you know what you are getting. Insurers get a reasonable backhander for forwarding their customers details to credit hire companies and so may well suggest they forward your details to Albany, Helphire, Enterprise etc to help you out (in reality they are selling you to them)

I can only say how i do things, it always pays to mitigate ones losses IMO, and not just because it lessens your own risk if things backfire, and boy can they sometimes, i'd rather be left holding the baby for £200 than £2000.

But for every motorists good keeping costs down is worth doing, i've shifted many of the fleets for some of these credit hire companies, millions of £s worth of almost all image high cars involved, we are all paying for this back scratching industry via higher than necessary premiums.

OnanTheBarbarian

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

, we are all paying for this back scratching industry via higher than necessary premiums.

Which the insurers are more than happy to facilitate by referring their customers to the hire companies.

They cut each other's throats. Happy to refer their own non-fault customer for all of the credit hire trappings, yet squeal like pigs when they are on the receiving end of a claim.

Happy to moan about personal injury claims, yet quite content to buy law firms in order to shunt their customers onto in order to reap the costs rewards and circumvent the referral fee ban.

Insurers are the biggest protagonists in our dysfunctional insurance/ claims industry, but manage to put enough spin on things via powerful lobbying to keep the Daily Mail stoked with enough sensationalised tripe.

nobbysn*ts

To the op though, Helphire need to provide you with a signed copy of the credit agreement, and see if it is valid.

csdodd80

Thank you all so much for your advice.

I have just got off the phone to the MIB who have advised that they rejected Albany Assists application for the Courtesy Car costs, because:

1. They did not submit their claim until March 2014
2. The limitation for claiming was 9 months at the time, due to it being an untraced driver (the car that hit us had a cloned number plate, gave false details at the scene etc) and despite this law now being changed, the period for historical claims has passed.
3. They did not have our authority to submit the claim in 2014, due to the time passed.

Seems Angel/Albany/Helphire failed to submit our initial claim, and have re-opened it due to the change in law - which explains them sending a blank MIB claim form.

The advisor at MIB has said not to fill in the form, because it will be rejected, but also because Albany may use that as an admission of liability.

I am going to contact Albany and ask for a copy of all agreements and documentation, but do you think it is best to do this is writing, without prejudice?

In addition she advises we contact the AA and request details on why they referred our claim to Angel Assistance, given that we were Fully Comprehensive and had Courtesy Car Cover as part of our Policy. We just assumed this was how AA dealt with their claims. We had never had to make a claim through them before, assumed the companies were all associated with the AA and it was standard procedure. Evidently not!!

At the time, I would like to add that Myself, my Husband and our children all needed the car for School run's and commuting. When we were told to call HelpHire by the AA to organise our Courtesy Car and later arrived and handed keys to the Passat, at no time did I think this car seems too good to be true. I just thought 'bloody hell - 2.0 litre and no manual handbrake!', and used it as I needed. We didn't go to a Showroom or an obvious Hire Forecourt to collect, it was our local garage. We just assumed as one does when they pay for Fully Comprehensive Insurance, that all was in hand with the Insurer and the MIB.

I won't be that naïve again!

Thanks again,

Colleen

InsideInsurance

csdodd80 wrote: »

We just assumed this was how AA dealt with their claims.

It probably was (and still is). Credit hire companies certainly used to pay a fair amount before fees were banned, Admiral reportedly received £15m per year in fees for credit hire referrals.

I havent worked in claims or claims strategy since the changes came in last year but I suspect they will have found a way around it. Getting companies to pay up front for marketing opportunities by postcode or such rather than explicit fees per claim which is how legal expenses used to be done.

They should not have mislead you by using terms like courtesy car and that could be grounds for complaint if they did actually use that phrase. Of cause they may have simply said that they'll forward your details to HelpHire to assist with a car if thats ok? You said yes and in time the word courtesy has been added into the conversation.


This all needs to be pushed back to Helphire for their miss management of the claim assuming you had fulfilled your requirement of letting them know whats happening back when things went to the MIB etc.

OnanTheBarbarian

Only PI referral fees are banned, credit hire referral fees are not (yet).

The only thing I can think of where the OP may have some trouble is whether they had told Albany/ Helphire that the MIB were dealing and therefore have prevented the hire co from being able to get their claim in time to the MIB?

csdodd80

InsideInsurance wrote: »

This all needs to be pushed back to Helphire for their miss management of the claim assuming you had fulfilled your requirement of letting them know whats happening back when things went to the MIB etc.

As far as I am aware we fulfilled all our obligations, in so much as we handed back the car and notified the MIB of our costs and the fact we had a Courtesy Car. Indeed I do recall also claiming back the money we had paid as an excess to cover if we damaged the car and the MIB paid this back to us.

Because the claim wasn't paid out for my PI and losses until 2012 I would have assumed that was ample time for HelpHire to chase monies or contact us to say otherwise.

Again, thanks for your hep,

Colleen

csdodd80

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

Only PI referral fees are banned, credit hire referral fees are not (yet).

The only thing I can think of where the OP may have some trouble is whether they had told Albany/ Helphire that the MIB were dealing and therefore have prevented the hire co from being able to get their claim in time to the MIB?

Albany/Angel/Helphire (sorry but they all seem to be one entity) were definitely aware it was an MIB claim - they had an investigator trying to prove ownership of the vehicle, because the clown who hit us denied he had ever seen the car. Incidentally, it was my detective work that located proof he couldn't deny he had ( date stamped photo's he had submitted on a council planning application for his business, one a month before he hit me, one a month after, and he was stood next to the car. :rotfl:)
Bang to rights, or so I thought, seems MIB discovered the plates were cloned and didn't pursue him further!!!

harrys_dad

You may want to cross post on the debt free wannabe board as they are very good there with advice on how to get information without admitting liability.