Car Insurance - received this 3 years after accident

Kay265

Hi all,

Just received this today, it's exactly 3 years to the day since an accident where another driver hit me from behind on the M60 and my vehicle was written off. Everything went via Hastings Direct, including a hire car for a week.

This dropped into my inbox today, and I've forwarded it to Hastings for advice, but not sure whether I should respond. It appears from the documents they sent that the other driver was insured but their policy was cancelled afterwards for non payment. If it was a 100% their fault accident, why am I being pursued 3 years later for them defaulting on their insurance. 

Is this genuine or a scam? Has anyone come across this before?

Good Morning,

Please see the attached the Defence which was filed by the third party solicitors in which they have disputed the quantum aspect of this claim. 

We note that hire was included within this claim and therefore are reaching out to discuss the following;

Firstly, you may be correct in thinking that you should be provided with a replacement like for like vehicle when your vehicle has been involved in an incident.

However, when provided there are two daily rates that Enterprise can provide the vehicle under. These being either a daily rate or a credit rate. The daily rate is typically less expensive than that of the credit rate.
 
To determine which rate the vehicle should be provided, Enterprise should query if the Policy Holder (in this case yourself) could have afforded to pay for the total of the hire vehicle if you were asked to, even though you would not ever be expected to do so.

We are aware that these checks may not have taken place and the vehicle automatically placed under the credit date.

However, the Third Party Solicitor are also aware that check may not have taken place and as soon as they see Credit Hire included within our proceedings, they dispute the total.
 
The only way we can prove that the rate is correct is to provide them a copy of your bank and/or credit card statements for a period of three months pre-accident and covering the period of hire or copies of your wage slips or equivalent documentation evidencing the approximate level of available income you had for the period of three months prior to the accident and covering the period of hire. Please could you advise if you would be willing to provide us with the requested documentation? 
 
We look forward to hearing from you urgently.
 
Kind Regards,"

born_again

Your insurer at the time will deal with it.
Do not respond to it.

moneytorques

Has your claim previously been settled in full or is it still in dispute?

CliveOfIndia

As above, don't do anything other than forward it on to your insurers (the company you were with at the time) and let them deal with it.  Certainly don't go sending any documents to the third party.  If any documentation is required, your own insurers will ask you for it - you should only ever be communicating with your own insurers, no-one else.

Aretnap

It sounds like your insurance company passed you on to a credit hire company to supply the hire car that you used for a week. (You may not have realised that you were dealing with a separate company for the car hire, a lot of people don't) The letter relates to that.

Essentially if someone else causes damage to your car, you can claim the costs that result from them or their insurers - like the cost of a hire car while you get the damage fixed or while you source a new car.

The flip side is that you are required to keep those costs reasonable - you are not allowed to go out and hire the most expensive car that you can find just because someone else is paying for it.

What means in practice is that if you have lots of spare cash lying around you would be expected to go down to your local branch of Hertz, hire a car with your own money, and then ask the third party insurer to reimburse you at a later date - because that's the cheapest way of hiring a car.

Most people however won't be able to afford to pay for an open-ended car hire up front not knowing how long they will need the car for - so if you're skint you can use a company that provides you with a car on credit. This is a more expensive way to hire a car, but it does mean that you don't need to spend your own money upfront.

It sounds like the third party insurer is pushing back on the amount that the credit hire company are claiming, and demanding proof that you could not have afforded to hire the car yourself. Hence the request for evidence of your income, bank statements etc.

It doesn't actually mean that you are at risk of having to pay anything yourself - it just affects the amount that the car hire company can claim from the third party insurer. If you're rich they can only claim whatever Hertz would have charged you for the car. If you're skint they can claim the full credit hire rate. If you're somewhere in between they can spend a good amount of time arguing with the third party insurer over how much they are owed. Either way it won't affect you - but your will have to provide the evidence they are asking for, and you will have agreed to do so if necessary in the small print of the car hire agreement that you signed.

Contrary to the posts above it's the credit hire company who provided you with the car who you will need to deal with - your insurers have nothing to do with it (beyond "recommending" the credit hire company in the first place). 

MyRealNameToo

born_again said:

Your insurer at the time will deal with it.
Do not respond to it.

No they won't, someone (could the their broker, intermediary or insurer) has sold passed the OP to Enterprise's credit hire arm to provide a vehicle on credit to the OP on the understanding that Enterprise will then recover the debt direct from the third party insurer.  It hasn't been provided under the terms of their policy and so is an uninsured loss and nothing to do with their own insurer (unless it was the underwriter that did the referral and then the complaint is only that they didnt explain things properly). 

Kay265 said:

Hi all,

Just received this today, it's exactly 3 years to the day since an accident where another driver hit me from behind on the M60 and my vehicle was written off. Everything went via Hastings Direct, including a hire car for a week.

This dropped into my inbox today, and I've forwarded it to Hastings for advice, but not sure whether I should respond. It appears from the documents they sent that the other driver was insured but their policy was cancelled afterwards for non payment. If it was a 100% their fault accident, why am I being pursued 3 years later for them defaulting on their insurance. 

Is this genuine or a scam? Has anyone come across this before?

Good Morning,

Please see the attached the Defence which was filed by the third party solicitors in which they have disputed the quantum aspect of this claim. 

We note that hire was included within this claim and therefore are reaching out to discuss the following;

Firstly, you may be correct in thinking that you should be provided with a replacement like for like vehicle when your vehicle has been involved in an incident.

However, when provided there are two daily rates that Enterprise can provide the vehicle under. These being either a daily rate or a credit rate. The daily rate is typically less expensive than that of the credit rate.
 
To determine which rate the vehicle should be provided, Enterprise should query if the Policy Holder (in this case yourself) could have afforded to pay for the total of the hire vehicle if you were asked to, even though you would not ever be expected to do so.

We are aware that these checks may not have taken place and the vehicle automatically placed under the credit date.

However, the Third Party Solicitor are also aware that check may not have taken place and as soon as they see Credit Hire included within our proceedings, they dispute the total.
 
The only way we can prove that the rate is correct is to provide them a copy of your bank and/or credit card statements for a period of three months pre-accident and covering the period of hire or copies of your wage slips or equivalent documentation evidencing the approximate level of available income you had for the period of three months prior to the accident and covering the period of hire. Please could you advise if you would be willing to provide us with the requested documentation? 
 
We look forward to hearing from you urgently.
 
Kind Regards,"

Do you have the paperwork from the hire car still? If you read that it should join the dots and its terms talk about the credit aspect of the arrangement. 

Per the above, your insurers won't be interested, they just referred you when you said you needed a replacement vehicle or whatever. 

Your credit hire agreement will undoubtedly state you must support their efforts of recovery and failure to do so will make you personally responsible for the debt. 

As the letter explains, they charge massively more for credit hire than if you had just turned up at their local branch and hired a car on your credit card. Some TPIs routinely challenge that you needed it on a credit basis rather than fulfilling your legal obligation to mitigate your losses and hire the car out of your own funds. Its not a hard thing to argue, courts are rather lax on mitigation these days, and given the open ended nature of the hire, uncertainty if you need it for a couple of days, a week, a month or longer etc its not too hard to say yes you could have afforded 7 days hire but you couldn't have afforded 100 days hire and there was no way to know the duration at the time. etc. 


following the advice on here given by most could end up with you having to pay the credit hire rate yourself