Accident question

[countryman]

A few weeks ago my Range Rover which at the time was being driven by a named driver on my policy had an argument with a tree, pretty much the whole front was taken out, no one hurt thankfully. My question is can an insurance company keep your vehicle as long as they want while repairing it, they are unable to get a part for it which Landrover do not have in stock, the said part has to come from production when it is made. The accident shop which is owned by the insurance company have no definite date when the said part will be made and they are now estimating the end of March, at this point it will have been with them about 7 weeks. Do I have the right to ask to be paid out for my car or do I have to wait for an unknown length of time to get it back. My correspondence with them has been very poor and they have pretty much washed there hands with it until said part turns up.

Thanks

[figgy]

They can't return an unfinished car to you so you will just have to wait.

Inconvenient but you could try and source the part yourself and let them.kniw where one is.

[countryman]

1 hour ago, figgy said:

They can't return an unfinished car to you so you will just have to wait.

Inconvenient but you could try and source the part yourself and let them.kniw where one is.

I think that's probably the case, it's the attitude of don't know and don't care really that gets me. 

[johnnytheboy]

3 hours ago, countryman said:

A few weeks ago my Range Rover which at the time was being driven by a named driver on my policy had an argument with a tree, pretty much the whole front was taken out, no one hurt thankfully. My question is can an insurance company keep your vehicle as long as they want while repairing it, they are unable to get a part for it which Landrover do not have in stock, the said part has to come from production when it is made. The accident shop which is owned by the insurance company have no definite date when the said part will be made and they are now estimating the end of March, at this point it will have been with them about 7 weeks. Do I have the right to ask to be paid out for my car or do I have to wait for an unknown length of time to get it back. My correspondence with them has been very poor and they have pretty much washed there hands with it until said part turns up.

Thanks

Pretty much will hold onto your car, you have no rights to have the car written off, it’s entirely up to your insurer if it’s repaired or written off, you have no input in that, it’s in your TCs of your policy 

 

I would get onto landrover customer care as realistically it’s them that’s holding it up and push them for an answer, in fact ask them to provide a hire car for you! If the car was off road in their service department I’m sure you’d have a replacement car! I’m sure there will be a mechanism via the retailer who is supplying the part to get you into a replacement car but they will loath to tell you this! 

Edited March 1, 2019 by johnnytheboy

[ShootingEgg]

Had this with my old lexus, waiting on a part, at the time i was using a hire car and my insurers were claiming off the party that hit me, so not that bad.. But once it was all sorted, I got quizzed by the third party for the 3k hire car bill that they got hit with. 

[bruno22rf]

Sounds like yours is a newish vehicle? - try searching breakers and see if a good condition used part is available?

[Wb123]

If it’s any consolation mine got dropped off at my local Landrover independent for a head gasket mid December and they still haven’t started on the damned thing (though it does keep working its way closer to the workshop door).

[guzzicat]

1 hour ago, Wb123 said:

If it’s any consolation mine got dropped off at my local Landrover independent for a head gasket mid December and they still haven’t started on the damned thing (though it does keep working its way closer to the workshop door).

I hope that is on the way out, & not in!

[Wb123]

18 minutes ago, guzzicat said:

I hope that is on the way out, & not in!

Still on the way in. I trust them to do good work and they are not hard to pay, but always eyewateringly slow as they get a lot of outsourced work in from the dealer that has to be done fast but at very good rates. 

[bumpy22]

14 hours ago, countryman said:

I think that's probably the case, it's the attitude of don't know and don't care really that gets me. 

this is a regular issue and the problem is there is not a lot that they can do. there could be parts on back order for months with no date. if they are large shops there will be probably a lot of cars in there shop with people in hire while parts are on back order. not there fault and nothing they can do. only complaint is with parts supplier. if you are entitled to courtesy car then make the most of that. the worst problem is generally with new models where parts can be a nightmare to source 

[Pistol p]

Bear in mind that if you've got a hire car through the insurance that it's costing approx £200 a day billed to your insurance company. The hire price is actually near £50 a day to them, but you don't need to know this. So they profit approximately £150 a day for you being in the hire car. And you and me will pay for it next year on our premium. Its down to greed. I see it all the time, " we'll need it for two weeks mate". Car is done in week 1 and then sits under plastic for week 2. 

 I'm busy because I repair cars on budget and on time.

[bumpy22]

7 minutes ago, Pistol p said:

Bear in mind that if you've got a hire car through the insurance that it's costing approx £200 a day billed to your insurance company. The hire price is actually near £50 a day to them, but you don't need to know this. So they profit approximately £150 a day for you being in the hire car. And you and me will pay for it next year on our premium. Its down to greed. I see it all the time, " we'll need it for two weeks mate". Car is done in week 1 and then sits under plastic for week 2. 

 I'm busy because I repair cars on budget and on time.

or in reality your garage is pushed to get cars out as quick as they can. keep key to key times to a minimum so that they keep insurance contract. i can guarantee no shop i know that is of any substantial size would have peoples car finished and sat around. if its done get it through qc to free up space for the next notification and book ins. but not all companies run successfully 

[Rewulf]

42 minutes ago, bumpy22 said:

or in reality your garage is pushed to get cars out as quick as they can. keep key to key times to a minimum so that they keep insurance contract. i can guarantee no shop i know that is of any substantial size would have peoples car finished and sat around. if its done get it through qc to free up space for the next notification and book ins. but not all companies run successfully 

Really ? How many body shops do you know ?

The bigger the body shop, the more likely it is to run this sort of scam, they have their own courtesy cars, which are 'lent' out and billed at top rates to the insurance companies, thats on top of the vastly inflated hourly rates charged for insurance work, and lets not get started on parts that are charged for, but never fitted, or never even purchased.
The longer these cars are out, the bigger profits for the bodyshop, and if anyone complains about time frames , you get the old factory back order excuse.

Ive been doing bodywork for 36 years now, and I can assure you, absolutely nothing has changed as regards the tricks that are pulled by garages, often with the blessing of assessors and insurance companies, its like miniature politics with all the brown envelopes passing about.

[bumpy22]

so you are telling me a bodyshop would keep a car for the hire car fee rather than earn profit of the next job coming ini can assure this has not been the case in any shop i have seen. if you make more from hire car fee than you do a car being work on then i believe the company would not be in great shape. in your 36 years in the trade have you not heard about key to key times and in insurance companies pushing for shorter repair times? 

[Rewulf]

44 minutes ago, bumpy22 said:

so you are telling me a bodyshop would keep a car for the hire car fee rather than earn profit of the next job coming ini can assure this has not been the case in any shop i have seen. if you make more from hire car fee than you do a car being work on then i believe the company would not be in great shape. in your 36 years in the trade have you not heard about key to key times and in insurance companies pushing for shorter repair times? 

 

52 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

they have their own courtesy cars, which are 'lent' out and billed at top rates to the insurance companies, thats on top of the vastly inflated hourly rates charged for insurance work,

The hourly rates, as you might know are quoted at estimate, so are largely static, the car hire isnt.
That £500 labour charge or whatever is dwarfed by a weeks hire, especially if the car is owned by the bodyshop, and thats just a small car, start hitting the prestige end of town and the figure doubles or more.
Even a £3000 labour job, being in the shop for 2 weeks , makes as much money from car hire, as the actual job.
Factor in a parts hiccup, and the profits due to extended car hire grow expotentionally .

Yes key to key times and protests from insurance companies factor in , but can be brushed aside in many cases by blaming main dealer parts departments, often quite rightly too.
Ine never found getting an extra week of a job too much of a problem.

Please dont tell me this doesnt happen, if you have any knowledge of the bodywork trade , especially insurance work, this is just a fact of life.

Record for longest car hire in my experience, 8 months ! Vehicle was eventually written off after repeated repairs (not by me )
My personal record for vehicle storage 2.5 years, insurance company 'forgot' about it, they refused to pay the £ 2500 bill, saying it wasnt their fault, (we settled on £2000)

[bumpy22]

Sorry little confused on this one to be honest. You are saying you make more from a hire car than repair? Surely most repairers are contacted to supply hire by themselves not outsource 

[Rewulf]

21 minutes ago, bumpy22 said:

Sorry little confused on this one to be honest. You are saying you make more from a hire car than repair? Surely most repairers are contacted to supply hire by themselves not outsource 

Whats confusing about it ?
If I own the hire car, and book it out at £150 per day, and the labour total comes in at £500 (for example) the job takes 4 days.
Thats £500 labour and £600 car hire, this is  very conservative example from a small bodyshop.

As I said, the bigger the bodyshop, the higher prices, if the customer requires a like for like whilst (for example) his Range Rover is in for repair for 2 weeks, you could be looking at £500 per day hire.
But thats going off topic, we are talking deliberate delays to increase car hire profit, something you say does not exist because theres no money in it !?

[bumpy22]

I would not disagree that there could be bodyshop making an increase on profits that are not 100%. Would i be openly admitting it on a public forum no. But i definitely do not agree about hire car fees. The simple fact is you would not spend a fortune on a buisness that you could make more in hire fees than your company does. But then i suppose it may be possible for a company never to have a audit

[Rewulf]

11 minutes ago, bumpy22 said:

I would not disagree that there could be bodyshop making an increase on profits that are not 100%. Would i be openly admitting it on a public forum no. But i definitely do not agree about hire car fees. The simple fact is you would not spend a fortune on a buisness that you could make more in hire fees than your company does. But then i suppose it may be possible for a company never to have a audit

Im not 'admitting' anything, this stuff goes on, its a fact, its also a fact that nobodies going to stand up and tell the world about it.

What you dont seem to grasp is the business model, tax aside , you have employees working for you, you charge their labour out at £45 an hour, you pay them £15, out of this you have to pay all the exes involved, premises, holidays tools, insurance, what does each employee earn for you daily after all expenses are taken ? £50 ? a £100 per man.
Yet you can hire a car out to a customer, charge the insurance company £150+ a day, less depreciation, its a far easier way of making money is it not ?

Look at it another way, you have a non fault customer, who is entitled to car hire, but there are no bodyshops in the area that can make an immediate start on repairs.
Do they not get a hire car from day one? Of course they do, maybe weeks before the car gets started.
But you can bet the car gets picked up very swiftly and taken to a compound or garage to gather even more revenue in storage.

You seem to not want to believe that business manipulates these factors to increase profits, Im not sure why ?
Youll be telling me next that used car salesmen always tell the truth about their vehicles.

[vampire]

and rates are set by insurance company/management company that far exceed those charged by non insurance commissioned garage,or at least that's how the home insurance loss works,huge profits but long time and a pain to get paid.

Dehumidifiers and drying out were the money/profit for zilch on flood repair/water leak.

[Rewulf]

46 minutes ago, vampire said:

and rates are set by insurance company/management company that far exceed those charged by non insurance commissioned garage

Without a doubt.

It's the insurance companies complicity in this that allows it to happen ,and keep everyone's premiums high. I've never been able to work out why.

I cant see how it helps them, it certainly doesn't help the consumer. 

 

[countryman]

May be I have up set them then, when they picked up my Range Rover they had a little Corsa on the back for me, I politely said that that was not suitable for me and they hooked it back on the recovery truck. May be someone is still being billed for it, I have no idea.

[Dibble]

So does the bodyshop always make money on providing "Courtesy Cars"? Reason I'm asking is I can't work out their motives on my current problems.

I dropped my car off a couple of Fridays ago, I had to drop it early as I was going abroad on the Monday and they didn't have a car ready for me. I wasn't bothered because I didn't need it and the agreement was they would Email me on the Thursday with Courtesy car details for me to collect on the Friday. They didn't do this and no car was available.

My company hired a car for me, I went in on Wednesday to collect my car and rejected it because the repair was so bad.

I thought the Courtesy cars were a Cost to them and the number they had available limited the number of cars they could have waiting to work on.( I presume they only make money when they are at near 100% productivity.)

My question is if I demand a suitable hire car will it make them move quicker or slower?

[bumpy22]

Apparently their incentive is only in courtesy car fees not repair fees. So there will be no push for volume of work. 

Back to your problem. They will have to place you in hire while work is being rectified. You could always mention taking it to another approved repairer. This will certainly get things moving

[bevsy]

If a bodyshop carries out a fault repair (Your fault) they will have to provide a courtesy car to you for free. The insurance does not pay the bodyshop for this just part of the agreement. Check your policy 99% of the time you only have class A cover which is a Fiat 500 or similar. So it is in there interest to get the part ASAP as to get you out the courtesy car so they can give it to the next person. The only time you get a like for like is a third party claim (Not your fault) They will supply the hire vehicle for the duration of your repair. The insurance company is the only winner here too as they will have an agreement in place where the bodyshop will do the work at £45 an hour but when they invoice will have a bottom line discount of 25% so the insurance has 25% of that bill too and most parts have only 20% discount so the bodyshop is loosing 5% on fitting new parts!