Prestige Accident Management - Crooks or saviours?
Discussion
A mate of mine had someone crunch into his Range Rover in a petrol station last night.
The Local Range Rover dealer is recommending that he uses a company called Bristol and London Prestige Hire to organise the claim.
This on the basis that he gets a replacement Range Rover from them and the they pick up the car, drop it off with Range Rover dealer and have the repair done, all of the claim hassle against the third party is taken away from him and his insurance company doesn't get involved.
Sounds too good to be true...hence I thought I would help out by consulting the oracle!
The Local Range Rover dealer is recommending that he uses a company called Bristol and London Prestige Hire to organise the claim.
This on the basis that he gets a replacement Range Rover from them and the they pick up the car, drop it off with Range Rover dealer and have the repair done, all of the claim hassle against the third party is taken away from him and his insurance company doesn't get involved.
Sounds too good to be true...hence I thought I would help out by consulting the oracle!
See here for typical hire rates which will be charged by the accident management company...
http://apps.abi.org.uk/tphire/Documents/GTA%20Car%...
Average of £250 a day plus vat.
Remember if he signs up for a hire car, he is ultimately responsible for the charges if they don't make a recovery. He also has to help the hire company in making a recovery which means going to court to explain why he needed a hire car. Furthermore, he may have to disclose earnings details, bank statements and details of investments and savings too.
http://apps.abi.org.uk/tphire/Documents/GTA%20Car%...
Average of £250 a day plus vat.
Remember if he signs up for a hire car, he is ultimately responsible for the charges if they don't make a recovery. He also has to help the hire company in making a recovery which means going to court to explain why he needed a hire car. Furthermore, he may have to disclose earnings details, bank statements and details of investments and savings too.
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=1&a...
not the same company but will give an idea of how credit hire typically works
no right thinking person would want anything at all to do with the industry
(what threads there are here on accidents / credit hire tend to be in speed plod & the law rather than general gassing)
not the same company but will give an idea of how credit hire typically works
no right thinking person would want anything at all to do with the industry
(what threads there are here on accidents / credit hire tend to be in speed plod & the law rather than general gassing)
pork911 said:
we ALL pay
So some clown runs in to back of you at the lights because they can't drive properly and you should have to go running around to sort out a hire car, repairs etc, some of us have better/more productive things to do with our time.As to your claim we all pay, why is insurance premiums going down then?
pork911 said:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=1&a...
not the same company but will give an idea of how credit hire typically works
no right thinking person would want anything at all to do with the industry
(what threads there are here on accidents / credit hire tend to be in speed plod & the law rather than general gassing)
exactly not the same company but will give an idea of how credit hire typically works
no right thinking person would want anything at all to do with the industry
(what threads there are here on accidents / credit hire tend to be in speed plod & the law rather than general gassing)
and in answer to the person saying aobut insurance prices going down , in part becasue of the focus on the more blatant cash for crash scams, in part becasue of the restrictions on referral fees etc , but AMCs and credit hire are still a blight on the business .
berlintaxi said:
pork911 said:
we ALL pay
So some clown runs in to back of you at the lights because they can't drive properly and you should have to go running around to sort out a hire car, repairs etc, some of us have better/more productive things to do with our time.As to your claim we all pay, why is insurance premiums going down then?
however the money clearly comes out of thin air and you know far more, so please walk me through it....
pork911 said:
berlintaxi said:
pork911 said:
we ALL pay
So some clown runs in to back of you at the lights because they can't drive properly and you should have to go running around to sort out a hire car, repairs etc, some of us have better/more productive things to do with our time.As to your claim we all pay, why is insurance premiums going down then?
however the money clearly comes out of thin air and you know far more, so please walk me through it....
mph1977 said:
AMCs and credit hire are still a blight on the business .
This.Last accident I was involved in the other (at fault) party's insurers offered me a daily cash payment as an incentive not to get an AMC involved! Clearly they were aware that these middlemen simply ramp up costs to inflate the size of their cut.
berlintaxi said:
If I need a car for business, which is the case, why should I have to sort out hiring it and sorting out estimates etc when I didn't cause the damage, that is what I pay my insurance premium for.
But the point is that the OP's mate is not going through his insurance, the AMC plans to get payment from the third party's insurance company, and they may refuse to pay for a variety of reasons.berlintaxi said:
Never said it came from thin air, nice assumption. If I need a car for business, which is the case, why should I have to sort out hiring it and sorting out estimates etc when I didn't cause the damage, that is what I pay my insurance premium for, and as far as I am concerned my premium is pretty reasonable, you obviously feel that yours isn't. Best we agree to differ, this is obviously your soapbox issue judging from other threads.
a courtesy car is different from a hire car, and both are very different from a credit hire carI believe that a family member has worked as a driver for this company for a number of years, so I would say that it is legit. He works every day and goes all over the country, so they certainly do a lot of business. He used to drive a low loader but now just picks up the damaged car (provided it`s driveable of course) and drops off a replacement vehicle, so I guess the company have at least tried to cut their costs.
I have experience with a similar (although not this particular) company, as a lot of new car dealerships seem to like to go this way now rather than deal with it in house. I used to work for a VW dealership who had their own bodyshop and loan cars, so you could deal with them directly but I don`t think they have the bodyshop any more and would probably have a similar arrangement. In-house bodyshops are expensive to run and take up a lot of space that many dealerships can`t really spare and would rather use for other things (like storing new cars). In my case, someone drove into the back of my nearly new (at the time) VW Polo. I took it to my local VW dealership to have the damage inspected and they referred me to the accident management company. They delivered a new Honda Civic to my home as a replacement and took my car away to be repaired. My car was off the road for a week and I picked it up from the bodyshop myself a week later and left the hire car with them. All in all, a pretty painless experience and at no additional cost to me.
I think I was quite lucky though. The man who drove into the back of me at a junction was an off-duty police officer giving a lift to a friend (another off-duty police officer). He was very honest and above board about admitting liability and reported the incident when he go to work to his superiors. I had a few letters from solicitors and his insurance company took a few months to finally pay up but there was never any question that I was liable or partly liable and I only had one vehicle at the time and needed another car to get to work. My insurance company did try to screw me on the renewal but I soon put a stop to that!
If there is no question that your friend is liable or partly liable, then I would say it ought to be alright to go ahead. Personally, I have a bit of an issue with like-for-like replacement i.e. you have a Range Rover or a Ferrari, would it be a massive hardship to drive a Fiesta for a couple of weeks. With an expensive vehicle like a Range Rover, I might be tempted to try and deal with the bodyshop directly and look into the cost of hiring something more modest myself for a couple of weeks or using one of the bodyshop loan cars if they have them. The only potential issue with this is that you have to shell out up front for the hire car and then try and claim that money back, whereas I never gave the accident management company a penny. Speak to the third party`s insurer and give them the choice of paying for a like-for-like replacement from an accident management company or a Fiesta from Avis and see which option they choose! If it`s not your friend`s fault, he shouldn`t be inconvenienced and not have the use of a vehicle but maybe it doesn`t have to be a Range Rover!
I have experience with a similar (although not this particular) company, as a lot of new car dealerships seem to like to go this way now rather than deal with it in house. I used to work for a VW dealership who had their own bodyshop and loan cars, so you could deal with them directly but I don`t think they have the bodyshop any more and would probably have a similar arrangement. In-house bodyshops are expensive to run and take up a lot of space that many dealerships can`t really spare and would rather use for other things (like storing new cars). In my case, someone drove into the back of my nearly new (at the time) VW Polo. I took it to my local VW dealership to have the damage inspected and they referred me to the accident management company. They delivered a new Honda Civic to my home as a replacement and took my car away to be repaired. My car was off the road for a week and I picked it up from the bodyshop myself a week later and left the hire car with them. All in all, a pretty painless experience and at no additional cost to me.
I think I was quite lucky though. The man who drove into the back of me at a junction was an off-duty police officer giving a lift to a friend (another off-duty police officer). He was very honest and above board about admitting liability and reported the incident when he go to work to his superiors. I had a few letters from solicitors and his insurance company took a few months to finally pay up but there was never any question that I was liable or partly liable and I only had one vehicle at the time and needed another car to get to work. My insurance company did try to screw me on the renewal but I soon put a stop to that!
If there is no question that your friend is liable or partly liable, then I would say it ought to be alright to go ahead. Personally, I have a bit of an issue with like-for-like replacement i.e. you have a Range Rover or a Ferrari, would it be a massive hardship to drive a Fiesta for a couple of weeks. With an expensive vehicle like a Range Rover, I might be tempted to try and deal with the bodyshop directly and look into the cost of hiring something more modest myself for a couple of weeks or using one of the bodyshop loan cars if they have them. The only potential issue with this is that you have to shell out up front for the hire car and then try and claim that money back, whereas I never gave the accident management company a penny. Speak to the third party`s insurer and give them the choice of paying for a like-for-like replacement from an accident management company or a Fiesta from Avis and see which option they choose! If it`s not your friend`s fault, he shouldn`t be inconvenienced and not have the use of a vehicle but maybe it doesn`t have to be a Range Rover!
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff