Hi all,

Back in the middle of July my car was parked outside the house (I have another car for work) when an 85 year old American tourist, on holiday, decided to get to know my car a little more intimantly. He hit my driver's side wheel with his passenger wheel, and basically caused £4000 pounds worth of damage, with no damage whatsoever to the bodywork!

He was driving a brand new Saab 9-5 hire car. My missus got all the details, and the law of course. I contacted my insurance company to let them know. Withinan hour I had a company called 'Helphire' a company owned by Angel Assistance contacted me and said, "as it wasn't my fault they would be acting on my behalf to get the car repaired". Great I thought less hastle for me, how wrong was I to be. They said they would get me a hire car out straight away which would be billed to the Insurance company, of the hire car. They seemed very helpful at this stage. The arranged to get my car picked up two days later and taken to their approved body shop.

A brand new Golf 140 Tdi was delivered and my scooby picked up as promised. This is where the helpfullness ended. My car was taken to a very large dealership which sells about 10 different makes, so I thought there wouldn't be a problem. This was 7 weeks ago and still no repaired car!

I thought 'Helphire' would be acting on my behalf and in my best interests, but unfortunately this is not true. All they are interested in is getting a hire car out to you so that they can start charging £172 per day....yes per day to the other insuarnce company. They have to go by everything the independant vehicle assessor says.

Three of my Prodrive alloys were damaged, two quite badly, I said that i wanted new ones not re-furbished ones. They have only authorised re-furbishing. Three tyres were damaged, which were perfectly good before the accident, they have said I will have to pay a contribution towards their replacement, as I will be gaining tread on the new ones. I have to pay for a fourth tyre, as you can't put three new ones on, even though as i said all four were perfectly good before the accident. Finally, they are possibly not going to repair the malfunctioning alarm/immobiliser, because the independant assessor says that it wasn't damaged in the accident!! All of the workings are in the front drivers corner.

My point to this is, if you get offered the services of this company think carefully. My insurance is with A-plan, and this 'helphire' policy is part of the cover.

Apparantly, the car is almost finished, 7 weeks later, and now the garage doing the repair have agreed, as i have been telling them from the start, that it will need to go to a Subaru dealer to have the alarm problem diagnosed. They will need to inform the independant assessor what the problem is and they will decide whether or not to authorise the repair. The subaryu garage are booked up for two weeks, this is why I told helphire and the garage to contact them weeks ago, but they didn't, They just seem to be blamimg each other.

Really fed up now, no scooby over the entire summer nearly.

Scoobyfella.

 

On the plus side you got a new mighty tdi mile muncher to run about in. I bet you'll miss the 60 mpg when you get your own car back

 

spoke to anyone from trading standards?