Credit hire - reasonable duration

Nobbie1967

bazzyb wrote: »

No, hence "at your own expense".

It's hardly the third party's fault that you wait for the settlement cheque before you even start looking for a car. If you think the car will likely be written off then why haven't you already started looking for one?

Being reasonable about this is to start looking for a replacement as soon as you receive notification that the car is written off. No reason you can't agree a deal with a dealer and put a holding deposit down on the understanding that you will take the car when the insurer pays out.

Holding onto a credit hire car for two or three weeks after settlement is not going to happen. The insurer is only obliged to settle the cost of the loss, I'm not aware that they have any obligation to allow you time to find an exact replacement as this would obviously be impossible in many cases with older cars.

Maybe negotiate extending their offer of a car for a few days past settlement in return for returning the credit hire vehicle now.

dacouch

The credit hire vehicle will be at a massively inflated price over normal hire costs. It will be circa £100 a day to hire

hollie.weimeraner

I used to be an accident investigator and quite often took statements on behalf of insurance companies. Credit hire can be a nightmare as they are generally over inflated hire charges.
As pointed out above you have a duty to mitigate your losses therefore you need to accept the offer of the insurers car (if it is suitable for your purposes eg. if you are a driving instructor and they offer a vehicle without dual controls then this isn't suitable).
If you carry on with the credit hire car you may find yourself liable for the car hire charges.

howticklediam

Thanks for all the replies. There is an overwhelming consensus to take the cheaper option which is what I suspected we should do and I will ask about extending the hire period.

We have legal cover and a lawyer for uninsured losses so we can ask them for advice tomorrow. Seven years ago we had a helphire car for about six weeks in similar circumstances and it ended up in court, but that was just concerning the rate, the duration was never questioned, so I'm still a bit unsure that we can't claim an uninsured loss for a car until we find a suitable replacement otherwise we have not been fully reinstated.

howticklediam

In case anyone is interested. The 3rd party's insurer have agreed to let us have their hire car beyond the settlement date if we haven't found a replacement by then. If they hadn't done, we would have hired one anyway at our own expense and claimed it back as an uninsured loss.

Auxillis

Hello,

Unfortunately, our service only permits for the hire vehicle to be used for an additional 7 days after the settlement cheque has been received and we understand that this duration did not meet your needs. If you would like to speak with a member of our team directly, please email onlineteam@auxillis.com with your reference number and we will arrange for you to be contacted.

We would also like to take this opportunity to clarify some additional points regarding our service.
The hire charges mentioned in this forum do not necessarily reflect the charges billed or indeed recovered from a third party insurer, as we have in place protocol agreements with over 80% of UK motor insurers to settle hire and repair charges at pre-agreed rates.

Also, all of our non-fault customers are provided with a free Credit Protection policy which ensures that the cost of any hire vehicle, vehicle repairs or legal costs are covered, indemnifying the customer. As you would expect, where a customer has been untruthful about the accident or does not assist in the recovery, this cover is suspended.

Kind Regards,

Auxillis Online Team

howticklediam

Thanks Auxillis. In the end we decided to keep the car you supplied because the 3rd party's offer was only for 5 days after settlement and our legal advisor assured us that there would be no problems getting reimbursed.

If we need longer we'll hire privately go through our legal team to recover costs.

dacouch

howticklediam wrote: »

Thanks Auxillis. In the end we decided to keep the car you supplied because the 3rd party's offer was only for 5 days after settlement and our legal advisor assured us that there would be no problems getting reimbursed.

If we need longer we'll hire privately go through our legal team to recover costs.

You will not recover costs past the seven days.

howticklediam

Well I have before. It went to court and the other side only questioned the rate, not the duration, which was about six weeks in total. I'm fairly sure we got paid at after about three weeks.

But it was a long time ago and I concede that things may have changed since then which is why I asked the question in the first place.

Does anyone know any case law that has settled the seven day maximum post-settlement.

FutureGirl

Auxillis just said in their post that you can only keep the car for 7 days after you've received the settlement cheque.

You can hire one yourself, but you won't be able to claim it back as an uninsured loss. You would have been compensated for your vehicle loss, so would no longer be entitled to a hire car.