Car Insurance - Without Drive Assist!

stevie19uk

I am being honest here, with the amount of customers that Drive Assist deal with, how many complaints have been made on MSE? Minimal. You only see the negativity.

If you hired a vehicle from Enterprise and had an excellent service, you wouldnt shout at the top of a building saying it was excellent. It doesn't happen.

Any damage that the vehicle has on it, is paid by the hirer and so it should be! Just think the amount of money a company would lose if they allowed small scratches on the vehicle and didnt bill customers for it.

Like I said in my previous post, have a bad customer service, and you will tell numerous amounts of people, have a good customer service and you will tell minimal. Surly you were taught that!?

uktyler

People who experience poor customer service go elsewhere, which is not always possible if your insurance company uses Drive Assist.

With most complaints on MSE there will be one or two people who say they have had a good experience, not so with Drive Assist.

Yes of course people should pay for the damage they cause, but many people appear to be paying for damage they did not cause. The use of PDA devices to take signatures, which are later printed onto forms the driver has not seen is at best badly thought out, and at worst an out and out con.

Companies with good customer service don't appear on Watchdog.

stevie19uk

Again, a lack of listening at the time of the booking.
Our procedure is scripted and we clearly state

"The driver will take you through the terms and conditions of hire, which is signed for on the PDA, your signature then gets transferred onto all the documents and sent out in the post"

Drive Assist make sure that you are aware, if you do not listen it is not Drive Asisst's fault that you didnt listen.

I would also like to make you aware of a customer on the very first page of this thread.

"Sorry to hear about your problems, however my recent accident (see my thread "Car Accident Liability") also led to Drive Assist being the hire car and uninsured claims people.
I can relate to your wife signing a handheld device - I had to do this. However, I was also asked to inspect the hire vehicle inside and outside for any damage (it had a small dent on the rear) which was then noted on a drawing and I signed that. I was advised that should the vehicle be collected with any additional damage to that I had noted, I would be charged. Did the Drive Assist driver go through this process with your wife? If not, it maybe you can protest on the basis that the procedure was not followed by the delivery driver and that the scratch may have been there on delivery.
I've found Drive Assist to be very helpful so far - they went through 3 depots to find a like for like vehicle (I have a convertible) and delivered at my convenience and co-ordinated very quickly with the insurance company (Axa) and the repairs - my car was in the garage being inspected 1 day after the accident (though roadworthy/driveable) and being repaired 4 days after the accident. Although the repairers quoted 1 week for work, Drive Assist booked the hire car for 2 weeks "just in case" and to call them if my car was returned earlier. Couldn't have asked for better service in my case.
It's 8 weeks since my accident and I haven't got my excess back, but that's down to the third party's statement being completely different to mine!
Good luck on sorting it out." - Posted by Ali-OK


As I mentioned before, the amount of customers that Drive Assist deal with daily is thousands. If the brokers thought that Drive Assist were trying to scam money out of customers, do you think they would instruct Drive Assist? No.

I would also like to make you aware that it ISNT the Insurance underwriter that transfer the claim through, it is the broker such as Broker Direct and Royal Bank of Scotland (Direct Line & Churchill).

dacouch

Churchill and Direct Line are an Insurer

stevie19uk

But they are referred by Royal Bank of Scotland, through to Drive Assist.

dacouch

A quick browse through google throws up these "fans" of Drive Assist, its very odd how they all seem to say the same thing eg the delivery driver says just sign here the damage is already noted and then when they give it back they get a bill for circa £200...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/jul/21/moneysupplement5

http://www.fiatforum.com/garages/78079-nationwide-crash-repair-centres-absolutley-crap-service-thumbd.html

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/community/forums/t/drive-assist-need-to-be-stopped-21411.aspx?PageIndex=1

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Helphire__Review_5820379

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/community/forums/t/car-hire-firm-reported-to-watchdog-14606.aspx?PageIndex=1

http://www.ourlittleshop.co.uk/119/drive-assist-watchdog/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/nov/24/2

http://www.plebble.com/listing133862/drive-assist-uk-plc/

dacouch

stevie19uk wrote: »

But they are referred by Royal Bank of Scotland, through to Drive Assist.

Direct Line and Churchill are the underwriter

stevie19uk

Direct line and Churchill are underwriters but are still referred through to Drive Assist by Royal Bank of Scotland who own these companies.

I was talking about Royal Bank of Scotland in general and was advising that it isnt the underwriter's fault. I am looking at previous posts and they say they are never choosing Zurich and Churchill again.

stevie19uk

I would also like to make you aware that Drive Assist have over 20,000 vehicles on fleet, so you can understand how many deliveries Drive Assist actually do. So you have picked out a small number of websites where clients have been billed for damage to vehicles.
Put that into perspective, and see how many happy customers there is, just becuase you wern't.

dacouch

Norwich Union have millions of customers and so do the RAC, there are plenty of companies with many many many more customers than you. The only difference is they may have their problems but not enough for Watchdog to do a special on them. Strangely enough all the people on the Watchdog episode had the same problem eg being billed for existing damage. Odd how they did not mention other Credit Hire Companies having the same scale of problems as DA.

You seem to not being seeing the picture, there are threads on loads of forums about the same problems with DA, there are nowhere near the same amount of problems with other providers. This would indicate there are problems with DA (They already know there are and acknowledged this on Watchdog).

I await your reply Mr Binch