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At fault 3rd party not paying courtesy car costs...

Wolveryeti

Wolveryeti

Detty Pig
Had a call out of the blue from Enterprise Car Hire setting out the 3rd party & their insurance were refusing to pay the costs of the courtesy car I had allocated when my car was being repaired.

Looked at the small print for the hire agreement and it says I am 'ultimately liable' if they cannot recover costs for the hire car. It is not a small sum (£2750 for 11 days).

The person from Enterprise asked me all sorts of personal financial questions like whether I could afford to pay £560 to rent a car for the period covered, whether I had a credit card and whether I would be happy to provide bank statements. Stuff I felt was irrelevant because I thought I was covered by my insurance. But they said they didn't as routine try and recover money from the insured - just third parties.

Doing a bit of research, this is apparently down to a legal defence of 'impecuniousness' when doing credit hire, which is what I now believe my courtesy car to have been.

Has anyone been in this situation and should I share my financial details? My instinct is to not share - think it would just embolden Enterprise to go after me for the money in the first place.
 
Had a call out of the blue from Enterprise Car Hire setting out the 3rd party & their insurance were refusing to pay the costs of the courtesy car I had allocated when my car was being repaired.

Looked at the small print for the hire agreement and it says I am 'ultimately liable' if they cannot recover costs for the hire car. It is not a small sum (£2750 for 11 days).

The person from Enterprise asked me all sorts of personal financial questions like whether I could afford to pay £560 to rent a car for the period covered, whether I had a credit card and whether I would be happy to provide bank statements. Stuff I felt was irrelevant because I thought I was covered by my insurance. But they said they didn't as routine try and recover money from the insured - just third parties.

Doing a bit of research, this is apparently down to a legal defence of 'impecuniousness' when doing credit hire, which is what I now believe my courtesy car to have been.

Has anyone been in this situation and should I share my financial details? My instinct is to not share - think it would just embolden Enterprise to go after me for the money in the first place.
 
Wolveryeti said:
Had a call out of the blue from Enterprise Car Hire setting out the 3rd party & their insurance were refusing to pay the costs of the courtesy car I had allocated when my car was being repaired.

Looked at the small print for the hire agreement and it says I am 'ultimately liable' if they cannot recover costs for the hire car. It is not a small sum (£2750 for 11 days).

The person from Enterprise asked me all sorts of personal financial questions like whether I could afford to pay £560 to rent a car for the period covered, whether I had a credit card and whether I would be happy to provide bank statements. Stuff I felt was irrelevant because I thought I was covered by my insurance. But they said they didn't as routine try and recover money from the insured - just third parties.

Doing a bit of research, this is apparently down to a legal defence of 'impecuniousness' when doing credit hire, which is what I now believe my courtesy car to have been.

Has anyone been in this situation and should I share my financial details? My instinct is to not share - think it would just embolden Enterprise to go after me for the money in the first place.
Click to expand...

Yeah it sounds like Enterprise have presented the claim to the third party insurer who have refused to pay them on the basis of impecuniosity.

As a starting point, it would be worth submitting a data subject access request to Enterprise for any relevant call recordings and then checking that the information that they have listed matches what you told them.

The Financial Ombudsman Service won’t look at any complaint against Enterprise, but they may consider complaints against insurers/brokers who referred you to Enterprise, if they didn’t explain to you the risks of using such an arrangement.
 
From what you've said, you were directed to take out a hire car in your name rather than having one provided to you by your insurer.

You had an obligation to reduce the costs of the accident, and you have an obligation to help the insurer recover those costs. Therefore to fulfil this obligation you need to supply the info.

You're being asked these questions to see if you could have afforded something cheaper than the credit hire (expensive) of whatever car you got. If you were demonstrably skint then you are able to make a greater claim because you're dependent upon that more expensive credit.

£250/day seems quite expensive. What was the accident car, and what did you hire?

Read e.g. Crash and hire car - other party wont pay hire fees - Page 1 - Speed, Plod & the Law - PistonHeads UK
 
Last edited:
Pickman's model said:
Ask a solicitor or talk to your insurers perhaps, sure they can offer advice
Click to expand...
Insurer was
Pickman's model said:
Ask a solicitor or talk to your insurers perhaps, sure they can offer advice
Click to expand...
Insurers were useless - spoke to some guy trying to reassure me they had an agreement with Enterprise not to pursue their customers for no fault claims, but when I asked for that agreement in writing he sacked me off.
 
Pickman's model said:
Ask a solicitor or talk to your insurers perhaps, sure they can offer advice
Click to expand...
Insurer was
Pickman's model said:
Ask a solicitor or talk to your insurers perhaps, sure they can offer advice
Click to expand...
Insurers were useless - spoke to some guy trying to reassure me they had an agreement with Enterprise not to pursue their customers for no fault claims, but when I asked for that agreement in writing he sacked me off
noodles said:
Yeah it sounds like Enterprise have presented the claim to the third party insurer who have refused to pay them on the basis of impecuniosity.

As a starting point, it would be worth submitting a data subject access request to Enterprise for any relevant call recordings and then checking that the information that they have listed matches what you told them.

The Financial Ombudsman Service won’t look at any complaint against Enterprise, but they may consider complaints against insurers/brokers who referred you to Enterprise, if they didn’t explain to you the risks of using such an arrangement.
Click to expand...
I suspect third party are refusing to pay based on excessive charges (they have a point - but I did not set them or have a chance to shop around). Impecuniousness is likely Enterprise's defence against the excessive charges argument.

I reckon I might complain - was promised a courtesy car, not an open ended contingent liability...
 
mauvais said:
From what you've said, you were directed to take out a hire car in your name rather than having one provided to you by your insurer.

You had an obligation to reduce the costs of the accident, and you have an obligation to help the insurer recover those costs. Therefore to fulfil this obligation you need to supply the info.

You're being asked these questions to see if you could have afforded something cheaper than the credit hire (expensive) of whatever car you got. If you were demonstrably skint then you are able to make a greater claim because you're dependent upon that more expensive credit.

£250/day seems quite expensive. What was the accident car, and what did you hire?

Read e.g. Crash and hire car - other party wont pay hire fees - Page 1 - Speed, Plod & the Law - PistonHeads UK
Click to expand...
Damaged car was a 2016 VW Passat. Courtesy was a modern-ish Citroen C4.

The linked thread is interesting but what I really want to know is what happens if the position is I could have funded car hire at spot rates like what I'm being asked about.

Not that it is relevant in my view - would never have accepted the car if I thought there was a chance I might have to pay the inflated rates as someone who was driven into while stationary.
 
In principle that in itself doesn't sound excessive.

I'm not a lawyer, and you'd have to look at your agreement(s), but I would have thought you owe Enterprise, your insurer owes you (you probably have to deal with them due to subrogation), and the opposing insurer owes them. There might be some trade agreement that from your perspective should normally shortcut some of this, but I suspect contractually that's what's going on.

If you end up having to pay Enterprise then in theory that's an insured loss that you can recover. From one perspective, Enterprise are arguably trying to make it easier for you by enabling the impecuniousness defence. But suppose that doesn't work out, you go back to claiming via insurance.

I get the impression that whilst they might threaten it, £3k is not worth them fighting in court about, and so it's unlikely you're going to be left out of pocket here.

I think if I were you, I'd provide truthful information to whoever asked for it, probably not actually pay Enterprise, pass the bill to your insurer and set out your position as having acted reasonably - needing a car, not prolonging the situation, and acting as advised.
 
Descendents of Mr Turpin are all around us, that there is actually a tax on Insurance the holding of which is a legal requirement for having a car on the road tells a lot of how the capitalist world works
 
This has been a huge issue in road accident litigation for many years. Some hire companies were charging absurd rates with the expectation that the insurers of the person at fault would pay.

Insurers got wise to this and refused to pay. The person who had the courtesy car is invariably told when they get the car that they don't have to pay anything. But the terms and conditions of the car hire say they do have to pay, as you can only recover from the insurers what is owed.

So you can have the hirer caught in the middle.

The law on this is developing and it's generally for the company that provided the car to recover the cost from the insurer.

Most solicitors won't want to touch this as there's no money in it. The insurer won't pay the legal fees and the hirer won't want to as why should they
 
mauvais said:
In principle that in itself doesn't sound excessive.

I'm not a lawyer, and you'd have to look at your agreement(s), but I would have thought you owe Enterprise, your insurer owes you (you probably have to deal with them due to subrogation), and the opposing insurer owes them. There might be some trade agreement that from your perspective should normally shortcut some of this, but I suspect contractually that's what's going on.

If you end up having to pay Enterprise then in theory that's an insured loss that you can recover. From one perspective, Enterprise are arguably trying to make it easier for you by enabling the impecuniousness defence. But suppose that doesn't work out, you go back to claiming via insurance.

I get the impression that whilst they might threaten it, £3k is not worth them fighting in court about, and so it's unlikely you're going to be left out of pocket here.

I think if I were you, I'd provide truthful information to whoever asked for it, probably not actually pay Enterprise, pass the bill to your insurer and set out your position as having acted reasonably - needing a car, not prolonging the situation, and acting as advised.
Click to expand...
Thanks - this sounds like solid advice. I have also complained to my insurer as in my view they were obliged to provide a courtesy car, made it sound like a no risk slam dunk, and gave no hint of the impending fuckery that might result...
 
alex_ said:
Not helping I realise - but you can buy a new one for 16k !

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Buy your Citroën Store C3 5-door Plus PureTech 83 S&S Manual online and configure your car by choosing its finish, its motorization, interior, color and options
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The insurance companies really don’t help themselves do they - why don’t they have a deal with a couple of car hire companies ?
Click to expand...

Yeah - pretty outrageous daily hire rate then. I suspect the wheeze continues because it's cheaper for them to let the hire companies charge their excessive rates...
 
My brother got stung by this. He was told he could hire a car after someone ran into him, but it took nearly 3 months before his own car was repaired, and when he took the hire car back, they said something along the lines of "That'll be 12 grand, please". Apparently, as stated in the small print, he should only have had the hire car for 2 weeks, max, after which the insurance stopped paying for it. It eventually went to court, where he won, but it did go to court, and he only got away with it because he had recorded the conversation where he was told he could hire a car until his was repaired.
 
Wolveryeti said:
Had a call out of the blue from Enterprise Car Hire setting out the 3rd party & their insurance were refusing to pay the costs of the courtesy car I had allocated when my car was being repaired.

Looked at the small print for the hire agreement and it says I am 'ultimately liable' if they cannot recover costs for the hire car. It is not a small sum (£2750 for 11 days).

The person from Enterprise asked me all sorts of personal financial questions like whether I could afford to pay £560 to rent a car for the period covered, whether I had a credit card and whether I would be happy to provide bank statements. Stuff I felt was irrelevant because I thought I was covered by my insurance. But they said they didn't as routine try and recover money from the insured - just third parties.

Doing a bit of research, this is apparently down to a legal defence of 'impecuniousness' when doing credit hire, which is what I now believe my courtesy car to have been.

Has anyone been in this situation and should I share my financial details? My instinct is to not share - think it would just embolden Enterprise to go after me for the money in the first place.
Click to expand...
So did they hit the courtesy car? Or did they hit your own car and you were given the courtesty car while your own car was being repaired?
 
What are the details of the accident? Who suggested (allocated) you hire a courtesy car?

Why can't they recover costs? Was the at-fault driver not insured? Does your insurance cover costs against uninsured drivers?
 
The person at fault's Insurence has to cover any damage to the third parties vechical but i don't know whether the legal minimum cover extends to providing a courtesy car? (I suspect not but could be wrong).
 
iirc, this kind of situation arose because when courtesy cars first started being offered while a damaged car was in for repairs the hiring companies blatantly took the piss with the hire charges, because they knew they would be reimbursed by the insurance company. But then the insurance companies got fed up of all the piss-taking massive car hire charges and started to refuse to cover the costs of courtesy cars. So it's not necessarily a given that insurance companies will cover it. But £2750 for 11 days seems like a total piss-take.

Sorry, that doesn't help you though.

When you say "the courtesy car I had allocated when my car was being repaired" - who allocated it?

Also, have Enterprise explained the discrepancy as to why, when their staff asked if you could afford to pay £560 to rent a car for the period covered, the final bill is £2,750, and not £560? Can they explain that discrepancy?

Did you provide them with credit card details? Because they might effectively have a policy of charging the hire customer first and quibbling later. (That happened to me with an abdominal ultrasound scan that should've gone through medical insurance via my employer. They said their systems were down and asked for my credit card details 'just in case' and then stung me for £450, and then the health insurance company refused to reimburse me.) Once they've got the money off you, there's no incentive for the insurance company to pay it, and there's no incentive for the car hire company to bring the bill down to a reasonable rate instead of the piss-taking amounts they try to rinse the insurance companies for, and which ultimately the customer ends up paying for.

Why did they ask for bank statements? Was that for proof of address? Surely a utilities bill or council tax bill could do with that, rather than asking for personal data in your bank statement, ie bank account name and number, etc.
 
Ultimately, though, it's probably down to you if you didn't double-check whether your insurance policy covered a courtesy car, because not all policies do.

You might be able to negotiate the price though. I mean, fucking hell, it would've been cheaper to buy a second hand car for £2,750!!!
 
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