credit car hire

gillscobbler

My insurance company is demanding my personal finance details so they can pursue claiming back Credit car hire from the at fault party's insurance company. They say that this is a legal requirement to prove I needed credit car hire so they can claim back the full hire charges. The claim for credit hire is £7500 for 28 days!!

Brie

Why do they need your personal finance details?  Because you paid for this yourself? (so proving what you actually paid on your credit card?)  Or are they saying that you need to prove that you need a car in general?   I don't think anyone who didn't actually need a car would buy one and insure it so what are they asking you to prove??

gillscobbler

That is exactly my point. whether i needed credit hire was dependant of my car needs not my financial status

DullGreyGuy

It won't be your insurance company demanding this, it will be the accident management company that provided the credit hire car.

Credit hire is charged at a much higher rate than standard hire cars. They will want evidence to back up how you fulfilled your legal obligation to mitigate your losses when taking a credit hire car rather than privately hiring your own vehicle and then reclaiming it as an uninsured loss. 

When you took the credit hire car you will have signed a form that is the credit agreement which will say that you will support their attempts to recover their outlay and if you fail to do so then will personally reimburse them. So your choices are either to provide the information requested or pay them the thousands the hire probably is being charged at. 

Aretnap

gillscobbler said:

That is exactly my point. whether i needed credit hire was dependant of my car needs not my financial status

It's both.

You can claim for expenses that you incur as a result of an accident, such as a hire car while yours is undriveable. But in turn you have a duty to keep these expenses reasonable - you are not allowed to hire the most expensive car you can find just because someone else is paying for it.

This means that if you can afford it you would be expected to go down to your local branch of Enterprise, hire a car with your own money (because that's the cheapest way of hiring a car) then claim the cost back from the third party insurer at a later date. If you don't have much money however you won't be able to pay for an open ended car hire out of your own pocket without it causing significant financial problems - so you would be entitled to use a more expensive credit hire company to avoid the upfront cost.

In practice this means that if your financial records show that you have large piles of spare cash lying around, the car hire company can only claim whatever Enterprise would have charged you (probably a lot less than seven and a half grand). If you're skint, they can claim the full amount. If you're somewhere in between they can have a good arguement about it with the third party insurer.

As above you will have agreed to assist them in reclaiming the credit hire costs when you accepted the hire car, and that includes providing information on your finances if necessary. If you refuse, they could potentially make you pay the £7.5K yourself, or whatever part of it they are unable to reclaim without evidence if your finances.

[Deleted User]

Just give it to them and don't worry about it. They will probably not get their £7,500, but that doesn't affect you.