£300 Per Day Car Hire ???

[tali1]

"A woman was given a £400,000 bill for the hired Mercedes she was given to drive while her accident claim was being resolved.

Susan Harries drove her Audi, worth £10,000, into a parked Honda in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, in 2016 and was offered a Mercedes C220 by an independent firm."


For three years, Mrs Harries hired the motor costing £300 per day with the total bill coming to £400,000.

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/woman-handed-400k-bill-driving-17237827

[twix123]

During a period of self employment in the 2000's, I used to pay extra to include Guaranteed Car Hire in my car insurance policy, as I needed a vehicle to reach my customers. The policy was for a similar car to my own, for the period the car was off the road (often policies only include a replacement car of the cheapest model available while the car is in a garage for repair).
I had two non fault accidents during this period. In each case my car was drivable until repair, which kept the hire charges down, but the cars I had at that time were 2 litre automatics, which the hire company could only match with C and E class Mercedes Benz's, costing £150 to £200 per day. In each case the other parties insurers paid the bills, after I signed them off when the cars were collected from my house.

Although the lady driver in question is at fault, the insurers should have been keeping a watchful eye on the case, in order to keep the costs down to a reasonable figure.

[Deskdiary]

^^^This has absolutely nothing to do with the insurers.

The lady in question lied to her insurance company and stated she was reversed into; when this was presented to the victim's insurance company, they told he to do one - what then happened was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between insurers as to who was liable, which eventually went into the court system. NONE of this would have happened has the lady told the truth in the first instance.

The lady in question has probably moaned over the years about the cost of her car insurance, and then caused an accident and signed-up with a credit hire company - these companies are one of the causes for the cost of insurance increasing.

The clue is in the name - to all intents and purposes they are extending credit, in the hope the person they are extending credit to will win, and then they will recoup the cost of the car hire; if the person doesn't win, then that person must pay the cost of the hire.

The example in the link is extreme, but I can remember a few years ago my BIL being shunted in the back of his 10 year old 3 Series, and a credit hire company gave him a brand-spanking new X5 to drive for three weeks, at about £500 a-day - so £10,500.

People should always act as a 'prudent uninsured', and all people have a common law duty to mitigate their loss, so quite how they get away with this sort of thing baffles me. People should ask themselves a very simple question. "If I had to pay for alternative transport myself, would I hire a car better than the car damaged, or would I hire as cheaply as possible to remain mobile?" The vast vast majority would do the latter, and therefore that has to be the correct answer.