Car Insurance - Without Drive Assist!

stevie19uk

May I remind you, you are implying that Drive Assist are an insurance company? - This is completely wrong. Norwich Union and RAC's customers use Drive Assist, as Drive Assist have massive contracts with these companies.

I think you should get your facts correct before posting a reply about a company you know nothing about.

If there were so many problems with these brokers then why would a massive new scheme (Swinton Colonnade) join Drive Assist?

dacouch

I did not imply they were an Insurance Company, I used them to demonstrate that just because companies are big with lots of customers they do not get on to Watchdog due to the weight of complaints about the same problem.

I know plenty about what I'm talking about thank you very much.

The reason NU and Swintons et al use drive assist is because a) you offer them a high amount of commission b) You are a national company that can supply cars throughout the country and match most cars

Swintons are well known for just using whoever pays the most

Over to you Binchie

stevie19uk

You are extremely rude. You know nothing about insurance and how it works.

If Drive Assist were that bad, then why hasn't the Financial services authority closed them down?

If Swinton accept the best paying company, then why does Drive Assist have contracts with Royal Bank of Scotland, Direct line, Churchill, Marks & Spencer, Post office, Yes car insurance, Confused.com, Swinton, Norwich Union?

Surly if a customer did not renew their policy due to problems with Drive Assist, and this happened regularly, then they would cancel their contract with Drive Assist.

Obviously Drive Assist are providing an excellent service to customers, that much that the company keeps expanding.

dacouch

I know plenty about Insurance thank you.

For the record RBS are not an Insurer they own Direct Line and Churchill.

You quote Norwich Union, they are renowned for having really poor judgement when awarding contracts, for an example of this have a search of MSE for "Asprea" who are their preferred building contractor.

As we both know you pay between £100 and circa £200 to the Insurer or broker that sends the credit hire over to you. Like I said before there are few options for an Insurer who wants to recommend a credit hire company as they need companies that have national coverage. The only other real option for them is Helphire we both know how popular they are (Yes I did get the round robin email about them).

Do all of the posts on MSE and other forums about problems they have had with Drive Assist not concern you? If it was my company I would not be coming on here saying everything is great with Drive Assist. I would try and help the people that are having problems with my company a bit like beccus does for NU. Your worth £65m surely you could look into some of these peoples problems and get them sorted. Why don't you send them a PM and ask for their details so you can look into them. I'm sure they would then post up how impressed they were when their problem was sorted out.

Crowmanuk

Ok Stevie here is the rundown of exactly what happened with me.
The car was delivered and the guy runs through all the stuff that you mentioned, he asks me to check the car for any damage and I point out the obvious smack on the wheel arch, he says that the mark is already on the sheet and points to a blob on the pda and the word "scuff" which describes perfectly the damage that is on the car. I then found a very tiny paint chip by the rear back door which he logs on the pda. I couldnt see any more damage on the car and signed for it.
My mistake at this point was not checking the pdf attached to the email as I didnt have the correct software installed at the time and trusted that after only seeing 2 points of damage and reporting both of them to the delivery driver that I would be ok.
The day before the car was to be collected we took the car through the car wash and hoovered and cleaned the inside before putting around £8 in petrol in to take it up to just under 1/4 of a tank, the same as when it arrived.
The collection driver pointed out the scuff on the wheel arch and said it wasnt on the log sheet so I didnt sign the pda to say I agreed with the condition on collection. He said that drive assist would be in touch to take up a disagreement procedure. At this point I hadnt checked his report on the pda.
I was next contacted to say that an inquiry was being held into the damage on the car and a week or so later I got a letter saying that the investigation was completed and that I must have damaged the car.
I phoned up to dispute this and asked if they had spoken to the delivery driver as I requested as we'd chatted about the car and I was certain he would have remembered, I was told that they had spoken to the transport manager who vouched for the delivery driver, to me that is not a full investigation as the relevant people hadnt been spoken to. I voiced my concern about this as the longer it went between speaking to the driver the less likely it would be that he would remember the condition of the car.
I was then told that I could then dispute it further and that payment would be on hold until the compliance team had investigated and that they would be in touch shortly. Just over a week later and having heard nothing I called and asked what was going on, I was told that the compliance team were handling the case and the person I spoke to would send them an email asking to get in touch, 2 weeks later I get a call from the credit department asking why the payment from the bank hadnt gone through.
So after having no letter, phone call or email this company had tried to take the money from my bank after telling me that "the payment would be on hold until the compliance team had investigated and got in touch"
The person from the credit department said that a letter was sent on the 23rd March, I never received this letter and thought it odd that a letter was supposedly sent when all my other communications were by email.
I asked him to send through copies of both investigation which I have not received and have been told I cannot have and at this point I have called in the services of the financial ombudsman.
I'm not somebody who makes a habit of lying and told the guy at the credit department that if I had damaged the car I would have paid for it to be repaired and it would have been nowhere near the £175 that is being demanded of me.
Disputing the case seems to be a complete waste of time as drive assist just turn around and say we have investigated and its your fault, without even talking to the delivery driver!
It seems to me there are 2 possibilities, 1, the delivery guy looked at the pda and made a genuine mistake, lets face it the pda is only small and in this day and age why dont drive assist photograph any damage, that way there can be no mistakes. 2, the delivery driver did the damage and i'm the sacrificial goat.
I've never had an accident in 20 years of driving and this is the first hire car I've had, as you can imagine this experience has made me very wary of using them again and if I'd known their reputation I wouldnt have had the car in the first place. The only reason I had the car was that I was told I wouldnt be able to use my car with a damage boot as it would be illegal, i'm wondering know how truthful that was.

dacouch

Thats weird Crowmanuk, your complaint is virtually a carbon copy of all of the other complaints on MSE and moneysupermarket. In fact its virtually the same as the numerous Drive Assist customers that were featured on Watchdog which resulted in DA apologising and acknowledging they had problems.

All of the complaints seem to be regarding either the amount of petrol in the tanks or existing damage that the delivery driver tells the customer is noted and for them to "Sign here". They subsquently get charged amounts that always seem to be in the range of between £125 and £250.

There is either a problem with the delivery of the vehicles or there are an astonishing amount of dishonest people out there who all seem to end up hiring cars from Drive Assist. I know what my conclusion is...

You have to wonder whether they actually spend the money they charge the customers on repairing these scratches or not. The fact that so many of their cars are delivered with scratches etc would certainly lead me to a certain conclusion.

So Mr Binch are you going to give Crowmanuk the courtesy of a reply to his detailed post and are you going to come back and insult my Insurance knowledge again?

Crowmanuk

Well its all going through with the FO now mate, but you were right in what you said, when the car was delivered I was asked to look round it to find any faults. I only spotted 2, both of which I reported and the big one I was told was already on the log, no more faults were shown to me and he pretty much left me on my own to look round the car. When the car was picked up 2 guys spent the best part of 15 minutes checking it over. If they just photographed the damage then showed it to the customer to compare to what was on the car they wouldnt get half the complaints and you couldnt dispute photographic evidence.

Just had another good idea, they could get the customer to tick off all the photographed damage to say that they'd seen it, any other damage on delivery wouldnt be photographed and would then have to be documented, do I get a brownie point for my good idea?

dacouch

Its a great idea, I have one two...how about whenever they deliver a car the customer goes over it with a fine tooth comb to find any existing damage and makes the delivery driver fill out the form showing every single bit of existing damage. Instead of the delivery drivers blagging the trusting customer that all the existing damage had been noted etc etc. This would add an extra say 20 to 30 minutes on every delivery which would reduce teh amount of deliveries they can do a day. This would mean Stevie would have to employ more delivery drivers which would come out of his £65millionish wallet plus DA would not have all the extra £150s they charge customers for the existing damage.

Unfortunately in the real world customers trust the delivery driver when he rushs them and tell the customer say all the existing damage is noted sign here. The UK public for their faults do not like confrontation, are generally submissive and when they are told something by a business have a tendency to believe it. As Crowman has discovered to his cost its after the vehicle has been collected and you get the bill that you realise that trusting a business can sometimes be costly.

If only everyone in the UK were members of MSE and had read this forum before using DA then they would know what to be aware of. The good news is that to date this thread has been viewed 7649 times, the thread on moneysupermarket (Which is even longer) has been viewed 42790 times http://www.moneysupermarket.com/community/forums/t/car-hire-firm-reported-to-watchdog-14606.aspx?PageIndex=1 and when Drive Assist had a spot on Watchdog about them there must have been millions who watched. Hopefully either Drive Assist will do what they promised when they were on Watchdog and sort out their delivery processes or more and more people will read this and other posts on the internet about them and be aware that you must must must check and double check everything on the car and DO NOT take what the delivery driver tells you as being the truth.

P.S If any potential Drive Assist Customers stubble on this post via Google, please take the time to read the posts from the start so you can see the types of complaints about them (They are all along the same themes) so you know what to be cautious of.

Anyway good luck with the complaint Crowman, whatever you do make sure you DO NOT keep putting posts on this thread about Drive Assist and the problems you are having as it will keep bumping the thread to the top of MSE and that would mean more people will read it.

Blue_Dave

Hello everyone,
well, it's happened to me too. Had a hire car from Drive Assist while my car was being repaired.
I had the treatment of being told about all the marks that were already on the car - a 58-plate Mercedes B series. Hardly a like for like replacement for my X-reg Peugeot 206, but I wasn't going to complain about that. But I made a mental note to go over the car with a similar toothcomb when it was returned.
The car came in a dirty condition after being driven around the lanes near my home, but it hadn't been raining, so I don't quite know where all the splashes came from. However, there were two recorded marks on the vehicle that neither I nor the driver could actually find.
Unfortunately, the garage rang my wife while I was at work, and told her to bring the hire car back to them, and she could take her own car home. Which she did.
No-one at the garage offered to check the hire vehicle on it's return. Then, 4 days later, came the invoice asking for £304 for damage. A mark up to 30mm, it said.
I know there was no mark on the vehicle. So, having given credit card details to cover any parking fees or fines that may occur, I rang my card company and reported my card as lost. So card cancelled, but I'll have a new one in a week.
Before writing my letter of complaint to Drive Assist (I rang them, but couldn't be put through to the 'right department' for some reason), I looked them up on the internet, and found all the forums and all the complaints about them.
So, I'll let you know how I get on. Must go now - I've got letters to write to Drive Assist, Trading Standards, BBC Watchdog, and my Insurance company (Sheila's wheels).
That's another point - if an Insurance company comes out top in the comparison website, ask yourself why they are so cheap. Chances are they've outsourced their claims procedure to Drive Assist. And Sheila's Wheels are the same company (same address, same policy numbers) as Sainsbury's Bank insurance, who in turn are owned by HBOS, who themselves have been in the news quite a lot recently.

dacouch

Thanks for your post Blue Dave, good luck with the complaint, I hope you get your money back.

Maybe Steve Binch aka Stevie19uk could come back on and reply to your post, no doubt he will blame it on you for not reading the Terms and Conitions which have been his stock response on here.

Please make sure you write to Watchdog as they have already featured Drive Assist on their program for funnily enough the same type of thing you encountered. Hopefully they may be interested in featuring them again as it would appear they still have the same problems.

If you have no sucess then also try the Ombudsman and the financial problem pages in the national newspapers.

Have a read on the whole of this thread and also the thread on moneysupermarket (There is a link in my previous post)

If you would like to avoid any future dealings with Drive Assist related companies then you should avoid the following...

Nottingham Auto Park
Sol Corporate Rentals
Millenium Motor Group

Let us know how you get on with your complaint.