Has anyone else had any problems with this company DRIVE ASSIST.

Basically they work with insurers such as esure,norwich union and on occasions hastings direct providing car hire to people who basically need courtesy cars.

In a nutshell customers have being giving the cars back to drive assist sometimes without inspections ,signing the electronic forms with no apparent problems r.e damage etc,then 6 months or so later they are recieving letters from driver assist telling them they are gonna be taking £250  etc from their credit card for apparent damage to the car.

If anyone else can give us a view on their service ,would be greatley intrested.

 

take it no-one has ever heard of them.

Heard of them, yes. Dealt with them, no.

SHARK! 

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For every positive action, there's an equal and opposite government plan.

Glad to hear it,

Would be intrested if anyone from drive assist is a member of this forum .

Do they have anything to say.

Note: This post has been moderated.

know of them deal with them hate them!!!! lol

Who do you work for polar and what can you tell!!.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one !!!! I went to the fso and after they got involved they properly investigated and found that I no longer owed them the £250 bill !!! How many people have had trouble with these people ? I just wouldn't let it go,I also went to Watchdog and The Ferret (Welsh equivilent).Yipee it's nice to see the big boys don't always win !!

cant say who I work for really, but I deal with those claims for hire on a daily basis!

ok no worries,

They were mentioned the other day and apparently all customers who compalined are getting the cases dropped.

VICTORY FOR THE CONSUMER!!

My problem with Drive Assist is slightly different. My son had a minor accident in the family car in May 07, as he was a new/young driver we had £500 excess on any claims from him.I spoke direct to the other parties insurers and offered to settle the damage direct. This was accepted and paid in full.

Out of the blue I receve a letter today from Drive Assist asking for £158.97 for a hire car whilst the other parties car was being repaired. Keeping in mind that he had a Peugeot 306 the hire agreement was for a Mercedes E320! If it had been for a smaller vehicle of the same class I may have considered paying.

Thats not all; when I checked the hire agreement copy they sent me it had a mileage "out" of 25 (new car) and a mileage "in" of 25, the total miles completed was also shown - zero!

So it looks like they expect me to pay for an expensive hire car that wasn't even used. I've drafted a strongly worded letter highlighting the problems and basically saying sue and be damned.

Is it worth digging my heels in and waiting for the county court summons (which I will defend myself) or shall I just pay?

 i reckon u should dig your heels in !!

Don't give up! Tell them you're going to the Financial Services Ombudsmen like other aggrieved Drive Assist customers have !! They did wonders for me just 1 letter from them and they retracted my bill !! Goodluck keep us posted.

Sent my letter to Drive Assist by recorded delivery, here's what I said - 

"I am in receipt of your letter making a claim for uninsured losses for Mr. D****. I am the father of John ******** and the policyholder for the vehicle S*** **R.

 

I am somewhat puzzled as this is the first I have heard of the claim for uninsured losses. As far as I’m concerned I paid promptly direct to Mr. D**** insurer for the damage repairs to his car. I did not go through my insurers as I had a £500 excess because John ******* is a new/young driver. As far as I was concerned I believed this to be full and final payment concerning the incident.

 

I have sought legal advice and have been advised that your client should be to use the correct legal terminology “mitigating their loss” by if necessary hiring a vehicle of similar specification to his own, not a top of the range Mercedes. I was also asked to enquire what the requirement was for your client in hiring a vehicle, was it absolutely necessary? In fact if you check the hire agreement it is apparent that the vehicle was not even used, if you look at item 15 of the agreement it shows a mileage of 25 when it was hired out and a mileage of 25 miles when the hire finished. If that’s not enough item 16 shows “miles driven” as zero. This would evidence the fact that the hire was indeed not necessary.

 

I submit that your claim is not valid and I shall not be submitting payment, if I receive any further correspondence I shall be referring this matter to the Financial Services Ombudsmen."

I'll post their reply when I get it.

 

 

I used to be an employee of Drive Assist in Tamworth, from May - November 2007, before they laid me off.

I have to say, they treat the employees as bad as the customers.

I worked on ACM Credit Repair - my job involved getting a new claim, sorting out an inspection to the client's vehicle, booking it in for repairs and getting them out a hire car.

And I have to say, the amount of claims I came across where I was told by management to send out a letter asking for money owed to Drive Assist was unbelievable.

In many cases, when the hire vehicle would be delivered, Drive Assist staff would not inspect the vehicle but would on collection. And on finding existing damage, would charge the client for (in many cases) over £100.

The way Drive Assist employees work is the amount of cars booked equals a bonus. So if you book 5 cars a day it will be £10 bonus at the end of the week. 10 cars a day was around £30 a week.

I lost my job after my manager quoted "You are only booking 4 cars a day. If you don't get higher, I don't get my bonus and I can't have that happen". So from then, I was forced to get as many vehicles booked by getting as many client's vehicles into a garage. Which is extremely hard when not having many clients.

Two weeks later I was told to leave the company, despite booking a lot more cars.

In my final meeting, I was told to leave the company immediately and get a reference or I could have a disciplinary meeting, STILL get sacked and get no reference.

This is a God awful company to work for and I definitely would not do business with them.

Use Enterprise Car Hire!!

Hope this has helped??

So far so good with Drive Assists Mickey Mouse claim, haven't heard a peep from them since my recorded deliver letter on the 10th December. If they do reply stating they still want a pound of flesh I shall be referring to the financial services ombudsman as advised.