I work for Drive Assist ... and have worked for their competitors as well. Your recollection of events is not accurate. Firstly I cannot believe that anyone would sign anything without reading what they were signing and the product being there!! are you mad? .... secondly, if the car was as filthy as you say, why didn't you reject it? You can at any time decline assistance and hire a car yourself. I have been in the industry for over 5 years and the call centers have very clearly defined scripts, due to the legal aspects involved, and explain that you will recieve a car on a credit hire basis as you have a need for a car. Companies like Drive Assist, Accident Exchange, Helphire, Albany, Swift, etc ..all provide additional services and collision damage waiver (like any hire company) for a small fee. These companies are providing a service to hundreds of people every day .... if they were as bad as you say they would not still be around .... They main problem you seem to have is that they tried to charge you for damaging their car, seems fair when you are charging someone else for damaging yours! .... next time you hire a car ..take out the collision damage waiver insurance ... about £4 or £5 a day, a very small cost for a car when you don't have one .... good luck, and safe driving

Just a quick follow up ..... these are not courtesy cars. Courtesy Cars are provided by the body repairers and most of them charge for insurance (about £10 per day and they are normally very small cars like Ford Ka or Fiesta.... not vey suitable for 2 kids, buggies and shopping). These are HIRE CARS which the costs are paid for by the negligent party as you have a genuine need for a car (and by the way all the companies in this field record ALL the calls made to their offices). You are asked questions like do you have another vehicle you can use, do you need a certain size of vehicle etc.

Make sure you read before you sign .... (doesn't everyone?)

Check the damage record paperwork that you are sent or emailed with the actual vehicle... (doesn't everyone?)

Note down the times when you called the call center ... helps with any problems that arise as they can listen to the recordings!! .... and you can use it against them in court!!

If damage occurs when the vehicle is in your possession .... even if its by someone else in Tescos car park ... you will be charged!! ...... simple answer! take out the CDW insurance like you do when you hire a car in Spain!! Accidents happen ... thats why you are dealing with Drive Assist!!!!!

The problem with scripts is that staff follow them as gospel without ever had independent training that would enable them to understand that the add-ons are in law nearly always recoverable from the offending driver and their insurers.

Unfortunately as the hire companies referred to operate at the behest of insurers they rarely advise customers without an eye on keeping their work providers happy.

Of cours ethe FSA has strict regulations on disclosing 'behind the scene contracts' that affect the advice given to vulnerable consumers which the law regards all accident victims are.

But there we have it not only have the FSA allowed banks to blow themselves into near oblivion but they have never ensured motor insurers cease behind the scene profit making agreements for themselves and their chosen agents of mis-information.....

ps this has not been spelt chequed!

i am not surprised by what i have been reading about driver assist. i had the unfortunate experience of having a hire car supplied by them by another parties insurance company. when they brought the car to me they realed off all these extra charges for insurance incase i had an accident bla bla bla but i just said no, i wasnt expecting to have the car for that long anyway. when the guy did the inspection of the car he was supplying me with i felt he was being really picky with what he was noting down so i started looking around it myself and pointed out few more nicks and scratches. they also took £50 from my credit card just incase there was any damage on return and this would hold all my details for them to take what they wanted. i must admit i was dead scared while i had the car incase anyone scratched it or anything. when i came to returning it they wanted me to bring it back to them so i just dropped the keys off at their office. whilst there i noticed on the counter this flip chart of the costs of damages. little scratches etc were £600 and £800 so i thought there is no way they are going to rip me off when they picked the car up.I made sure they phoned me when they arrived and told them i wanted to be there when they did their inspection. there was no way they were going to pick the car up and then call me and tell me about "damages". I did notice that an "I" was missing off the word FIESTA on the back of the car but didnt know whether it was like that before. anyway thankfully the guy never noticed he was too busy looking for scratches elsewhere but i can certainly see how they carry on if your not vigilent and i phoned them straight away to get my £50 put back on my card which they did!

What consumers are never informed of when the 'at fault' insurer calls to 'assure you they are admitting liability and will deal with your claim' is that;

The FSA Regulations dictate that you should receive in writing confirmation of their conflicts of interest and that you give your 'informed consent' that you are content with their conflict of interests! The conflicts are clear; the more services you receive the less profit the insurer makes. Therefore, over the last few years under the complete lack of regulation of insurers by the FSA. (see banks and causes of the credit crunch for thousands of exmples) motor insurers have made behind the scene contracts with hire companies, solicitors and car repairers to ensure that the value of a claim is 'capped' via many and varies forms of conduct and practice. All undisclosed to any consumer?

Claims Capping is well known as even consumers own insurers sell claims onto solicitors that they tell consumers are 'selected' or 'appointed' by the insurer concerned. Of course, these clear conflicts are never disclosed or any 'informed consent' obtained.

Repairing garages that rely upon insurers work referrals are well known to commonly have defective work levels approaching 50%. This may be because they are content to operate with insirers to use non-genuine parts and on many occasions second hand parts to keep repair costs to the insurers down. None of these facts are ever disclosed using the prescribed processes to obtain 'informed consent' as who in their right mind agrees to have their vehicle repaired using components that reduce the value of the vehicle once repaired as who when buying a car pays the same price for a car that was repaiered using a lesser standard than should have been?

Of course insurers operate free of any Ombudsman scrutiny as no 'third party' is allowed to have the Ombudsman investigate the conduct as the Ombudman operates under rules set up under 'insurer influence'.

Despite the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 clearly stating that anyone who has a right to claim upon any policy which all injured parties claiming upon another motorists insurance policy are, have a right to seek a refrreal to the Ombudsman. However, the Ombudsman uses their own interpretation of the FSMA to decline any third party complaint even when an insurer uses, self employed, untrained, unregulated 'agents' to seek out injured parties to ensure they are persuaded, cojuled and misled and even intimidated into accepting veastly reduced amounts for their injuries than the law allows.

So whenever you receive a call from an insurer explaining they are here to help, form you own view with these few pieces of information that I experience everyday in my professional life.

Hence the FSA are generaaly known as the commonly used words linked to the initials SFA, following the words they do.....

Oh yes, when you accept an insurer arranged hire car. The hire company can make as much from the add ons they seek you pay for than they do from the profit on the hire vehicle. The vehicle will be withdrawn upon instructions from the insurer rergardless of whatever you feel is fair. Also, those without a vehicle and in a finacial hole will be more likely to agree to the vastly reduced valuation of their vehicle when the insurance engineer has valued the vehicle within the reduced values an insurer has directed him to use. Also, if an engineers salary is linked to the costs reductions in claims are they likely to ensure your vehicle is valued at its full open market value or arrange for only manufacturers genuine parts to be used?

You decide?

Keep safe and if any thing happens make sure you seek out a truly Independent Accident Management Company authoried by bothe the FSA, MoJ and a Member of the Claims Standards Council.

The citzens of Plymouth f=generally use a company operating from that fine city and apparently do so because they know there are no behind the scene contracts operating that limit the value or quality of the services they receive.

But I am bias after nearly 20 years of only handling claims for consumers and catching insurers call centre kiddies out!

Ro

as usual no spell check !

Same old behind the scene tricks from insurers and their agents

Got exactly same problem, they initially obtained my bank card details and when they collected the courtesy car, they claimed that I have damaged their car. I disputed it and refuse to sign for their claim as I was 100 % sure that i did not cause any damage. Few days later, using my bank details they obtain beforehand debited money from my account.

This is the biggest fraud that ever happened to me and they need to be stopped before they continue to rob people

Drive Assist will try it on in anyway shape or form. Someone from work made sure he took pics of his from them when dropped off, it had scratches when dropped off and they still tried to claim £250 worth of damages until the photos were adviced were in his custody

Seems the 'insider' view agrees where these companies make their profits .....In Law any CDW is a loss stemming from the original incident that gave rise to the need for a replacement car and should be paid by the insurer concerned not the claimant or hirer of the car.

As insurers pay peanuts their service providers can sometimes act like monkeys and repeat what is on a computer screen rather than what is set in law for the injured party.

The £4 or £5 per day adds up to a massive profit for the hire companies as they apparently provide 'hundreds of cars a day' all of which the hire customer should not be billed for!!!!....its a gain for these types of hire companies when the insurers should be complying with the law and covering the CDW...however with insurers they help the hire companies profit charges...to keep their own costs down???

To avoid any insider suppliers with their teaser phone calls stating they are to provide a car from the insurer of the driver that caused the collision seek out an independant company that does not operate any behind the scene schemes with insurers.

I expect the insurers still dont explain that they authorise second hand parts and non-genuine parts in the repair of vehicles.....but then again the FSA are so far behind these scams that prjudice consumers there is little chance companies acting with insurers will ever be caught and prosecuted....just avoid any comapny where staff repeat scree messages.

Oh the only reson these companies are around could be that insurers use them as they do what insurers want done to cap the value of a consumers claim??

R

I have today grave concerns with this Drive assist after having a vehicle for a day and a half. driving 40 miles on normal roads and then reading what their collection driver wrote on the condition report. I have written to my insurer and also drive assist. They claim in a day and a half I have scratched the front and back bumpers, side panel and chipped the windscreen. Also in the day and a half I had it the clean exterior and interior are now dirty!!! The car was clean on the outside when I got it and went back clean on the outside..but it was dirty and smelly on the inside when i got it and went back the same. Infact it was such a smell that i drove with the window open! They gave me the car quarter tank full and entered as much on the report. I did 40 miles and put £6 diesal in and the gauge was just above quarter when returned but the guy put..nearly empty. How can this happen in this country in this day and age. What exactly is going on here??

I have made several entries on this blog. It would seem that if the financial facts I am aware of are matched to the experiences of those who have received vehicles from cold calling insurers who contact vulnerable consumers to 'offer help following a non-fault collision' are added together I belive the conduct of 'claims capping' by insurers is being experienced many thousands of times.

Because of the the financial difficulties most banks who own many insurers face they are operating the practice of Third Party Capture, Intervention, Assistance, Hekpline and many other various terms that amount to the same practice that the Office of Fair Trading apparently outlawed when the Consumer Protectio from Unfair Trading Directive 2008 became law last easter (2008).

The regulation banned the practice of cold calling vulnerable consumers in order to direct them away from a free choice of services avaliable in the open market.

Unfortunately injured and vulnerable consumers are seen as a market that insurers can 'cap' or 'reduce' the value of their lawful and legitimate compensation claim.

Insurers operate via agents (companies and individuals' who earn their profits by isolating consumers from independent advisors following a road traffic collision that was not the consumers fault. This is in order to create profit for insurers by cutting the compensation paid to consumers. If I am wrong why do insurers seek out and cold call injured consumers?

Do insurers cold calling injured and vulnerable consumers ever advise them to seek out independent professional advice in order to prevent any conflicts of interests?

Hence, agents supplying cars for insurers will often make their profit from selling add-ons, telling when selling to the customer the add-on protects the customer from any liability for accidental damage to the vehicle which, from the reports here never actually happened.

The insurer's car hire company will often be told to take the car away from the consumer when the consumer argues that the insurer has undervalued their written off vehicle, Remember, no hire car no money for their own car and consumers soon give in!

Generally,

The FSA have strict rules that outlaws many of the preactices but as we all know the FSA do not regulate large corporations in the way one would expect. It is often thought this is because many of the FSA's senior officials come from the same corporations that conduct the distasteful practices that leaves consumers under-compensated!

Unfortunately the Financial Services Ombudsman is also operating in a manner that prevents any consumer from ever being able to complain against any insurer when the consumer has not bought a policy from the insurer who is conducting themselves in such a prejudiced manner.

This is despite the statute the Ombusdman operating under actually stating that any person who has a right to claim on a policy (which is what an injured third party is doing) has a right to seek a complaint against the insurer is dealt with by the Ombudsman! I wonder why the Ombudsman has decided to block complaints against insurers who are cold calling injured and vulnerable consumers in order to reduce the value of their claims? Perhaps it's staffed by former corporate employees.

Rather than rant for another time the best thing any injured consumer can do is seek out an independent claims advisor who also provides replacement car hire, vehicle repairs, and many other services where the charges are included in the claims against the at fault insurer.

It does seem that neither the FSA, MoJ or Ombudsman has any desire to prevent insurers conducting themselves in such a manner that consumers are unlikely to ever be compensated fairly when they are the victim a 2nd time from insurers 'Third Party Capture'.

On a case last week my organisation discovered an Irish Insurers' agent advising an injured party that their claim was not valid. The 'Insurers Advisor' had purposely misquoted the Highway code in order to misinform the injured party regarding speed limits. The same Insurer in another matter misadvised another consumer as to the stopping distances quoted in the highway Code.

Other insurers approaching injured consumers uses second hand parts and non-genuine parts in the repair of injured consumers vehicles.

Another insurer used a garage that would not relaease a consumers repairable vehicle to them until they dropped their claim against the insurer concerned.

ALL PART OF THE CORPORATE BULLIES CONDUCT THAT THE FSA SUPPORT AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF CONSUMERS.

Happy and safe motoring.

Roly the Rant!

I was fortunate to receive a car from drive assist after an accident in my own.

A very nice chap deliverd it to me at my work on the same day as my accident which I thought was very impressive, we went through the paperwork and he re-iterated to me numerous times that the insurance would run out a midnight on Friday - he really did stress that.

On the Friday I called Drive Assist to advise of the address where they should collect the car (from my boyfreinds house in a quite cul de sac. They said that the car would probably not be collected over the week end and I said there would be no one there to give them the keys during the week to which they said leave the keys in the car - I did so at 11am on the Saturday morning.

I heard nothing more until Wednesday when they called to arrange collection of the car (5 days after my hire period finished - a little strange) I told them to help thm selves the car was there - the following day I got another call to say that they were there to collect the car, again I said help yourselves. It then transpired that the car had been stolen. Drive Assist then told me that I had to report it to the police as it was in my possesion, I said no as the car was not in my possssion from midnight on Friday and it was there when I left the keys in it after that. I then heard nothing more until a couple of days later when the police called me to say that they had found the car with false plates on it and 3 youths in it.

A couple of weeks later a recived a letter stating that they are charging £250 to my credit card, no contact name given - nice! The matter is now in the hands of my credit card company.

My questions are:

Why would a profit making organisation leave a car for 5 days when it could be earning them money

The car is a 1.2 Fiat Punto and, no offence but it's hardly a high risk car (leading me to beleive that the theives were tipped off by some one from drive assist)

IF I AM EVER OFFERED A CAR FROM DRIVE ASSIST FROM AN INSURER I WILL REFUSE IT.

This is the first time I have ever entered into a website forum but I am absolutely furious about this and I love the fact that we as disgruntled customers have the opportunity to air our views, warn everyone else about rogue traders and hopefully damage crooked businesses.

I have never ever come accross a company that is so incompetent at what it claims to do! (and this includes the various investment companies that have lost my money while taking big chunks of it to pay their bonuses!)

My tale of woe with drive assist is too long to list it all out here, but they have supposedly been persuing an insurance claim for us for about two and a half years now. Admitedly it was slightly complicated as it I was reversed into by a dutch lorry whilst parked on a ferry in Ireland, but they are just totally useless. I think that they must recruit school leavers straight off the dole queue.

For example however:

We gave them the phone number of the Dutch transport company. About three weeks later thay rang back saying that they couldn't get through. Turns out that they weren't putting the code for holland on the front.

Thay asked us to supply information that they already had.

Then they said that they could call the irish insurance agent involved as that would be classed as harrasment. However that didn't stop them ringing us three times a day just after the incident, to get us to take a car in the first place!

Then they appoint a solicitor to persue the claim, who it turns out couldn't do it because of the international aspect of it. Then they say that they're appointing another solicitor. This was about a year ago, and we've heard nothing from anyone since.

Any third party's insurance company having to deal them will soon pick up on the fact that they are dealing with idiots, and use that fact to their advantage.

Fortunately the damage to our car wasn't too bad, I repaired it myself and it cost about £200, so I've now just written that off.

If anyone looking for car insurance hears the name 'Drive Assist' mentioned then tell the insurance company that you're not interested, and tell them why. If all the insurance companies drop them then Drive Assist might be stopped.

It was 2.5 years ago and it still makes me angry.

Grrrrrr

I know what all you people are saying, however this seems to be mainly due to "old hands" in the job who fleece clients, I have just recently started work for da ( 3 months ago and @ 39 hardly a school leaver especially with 11 olevels 4 a levels c&g in electronics, however wearing a hearing aid doesn't help) anyway we were drilled in the art of customer service and at no point could i see any possible way to "fleece" the customer if you do the job properly, at all times i explain to the customer what i am doing and i make sure that all damage is pointed out to them, i understand it can be difficult in the dark but i carry a torch and i will not leave a customer until that customer is 100% satisfied with my service, i will answer every question that i am qualified to do so.

i have heard of horror stories re customers and bad service, but all i can advise anyone that is using da is that when the driver or drivers come round is to a: go around the vehicle with them b: make sure that they explain everything they are doing on their PDA and c: try not to leave your replacement vehicle at a garage to be collected, we will collect from your home or place of work and it is 100% advisable to always be there so that you can sign for the car when it is collected. also if you have any concern, or "god forbid" any praise, then ask for the drivers badge or name as it will facilitate any dealings with their depot.

ps money doesnt mean anything to me, especially making it for a large corporate entity, i care about my work and try to give myself a bit of pride in what is a very poorly paid job, but in a very uncertain job market i am glad to do it and to this end i bought myself loads of valet equipment and do all the cars i collect and deliver before the clients receive them.

sorry for my rant

B

AVIOD DRIVE ASSIST

I have never before been given such poor customer service or shoddy cars as those from Drive Assist.

I have happily insured both my cars with Privilege for a number of years. Recently both my cars were written off when someone drove into them whilst parked outside my house. Privilege arranged for two replacement cars to be provided. 24 hours later we received one car which was full of rubbish and with faulty brake lights and one with a back seat covered in dog hairs (not great for asthmatic son).

We were told to take the car with faulty brake lights to a dealership, but on inspection by the RAC it was deemed an electrical fault. We were persuaded to take delivery of an automatic which we have no experience of driving - when delivered we refused to accept it.

The car with dog hair was replaced by a car which had been used by smokers - also not great for asthmatic son. The car was delivered late at night and we were told that it was not possible to perform a full inspection. On complaining to Drive Assist they offered to valet the car - using cleaning products again not suitable for asthmatic son - we complained saying that we wanted the car swapped.

At this point Drive Assist refused to swap the car saying that they felt that they had swapped the car enough times and we would have to go back to our insurance company.

i phone our Privilege who agreed I'd been unfairly treated, they phoned Drive Assist who agreed they'd made a mistake and I could have another car ....then Drive Assist phoned back saying that the person who'd made this decision had made a mistake and I couldn't have another car.

Now I don't have a car and it'll be three more days before I can complete the purchase on a replacement for the one that was written off.

I am amazed that Drive Assist proudly trumptets it awards on the homepage of its website. I can only assume that for it to be in the final of the National Business Awards in the Midlands and East of England that the economic downturn is so bad that Drive Assist is one of only two companies remaining in the Midlands and East of England.

I have never been so angry/disappointed/upset by the stress, rudeness and unhelpfulness of a contact centre. The only good thing about Drive Assist are their delivery drivers.

A