Post crash hire bike costs.

So, I came off my bike last weekend due to some fella deciding to do a U-turn in front of me. He's admitted blame so all is ok. The insurance company have picked up my poor SV and I have been advised that they are likely to write it off!

They've now supplied me with a spare bike in the mean time (Kawasaki ER-6n (which is TINY!)).

What gets me is that they're charging the chaps insurance company £6500+ to hire the bike to me for 85 days! Surely it would just be better to buy me a brand new bike.....the delivery man who gave me the bike this morning explained that the hire bikes are paid off withinin two hires/accidents.

It all seems very odd to me that my insurance company is set to make:

Legal Fees (got to be in the region of £1000)
Bike Rental (£6500+)
Admin charges (few £100)
Etc.

out of the incident and will probably end up with a load more cash than I will out of it! I'd be pretty happy if the fella's insurance just handed me £6500 for a new bike....

Makes you realise why insurance premiums are so much when the insurance companies claim so much money for an accident that they weren't even involved in.

[maviczap]

This is why all our premiums are going through the roof

Seems a bit daft to charge your insurance for 85 days at around £76 a day! Surely it's not going to take that long to fix your bike or write it off. After my shunt I was supplied an Er6n which was ok for around town for a bit but it was supplied by the garage that was doing the repair.

Agreed though, insurance companies charge a mad amount of money to the third party insurance which is why we pay so much in premiums.

[Drew Carey]

When I got shunted from the rear, they only had to replace, rear light unit, indicators, plastics, tail tidy, tyre and exhaust - the total bill......

A staggering £7k. I had a Honda Hornet for weeks, although the work was done relatively quickly - it was the other parties insurance which held up the process and thus cost themselves more.

It is a crazy process.

Yep, it's all being paid for by his insurance but surely they could save a shed load of money by just handing me the £6.5k and being done with it!

As the delivery man said this morning to me....if there's someone to blame then there's money to be made! Madness!

This after all, is our money that is being made my these insurance companies!

[Red Herring]

Why not just ring up the other insurance company and put that to them. If you offer to deal with them directly and take a one off payment for your bike and aggro you would be better off and they would pay out less.....?

I think that could very well be the way to go about it but I'm not sure if my insurance would try and charge me admin fees and the like if I get in the way of them making their money...

[yorkie_chris]

I'm not sure your insurance company stand to make that much out of it, it will all be paid by 3rd party insurers surely?

[TamSV]

The insurance company will get a referral fee from the hire company, which could be substantial.

It's pretty much cost-neutral from the insurers point of view, because they're all doing it and it will be the other way round next time.

It's certainly not cost effective from the policyholders point of view though. All these uncompetitively priced vehicle hires, inflated legal fees etc drive up the cost of premiums overall.

There's an offensive amount of money sloshing round motor claims these days and everyone's got their fingers in it - insurance companies, brokers, bodyshops, car hire firms, solicitors, police, NHS - all taking fees and adding cost.

There's talk of referral fees being banned but there's such a big business surrounding claims now that any ban will be severely tested. I'm already hearing accident management firms talking about paying "marketing support" if referral fees are banned.

From previous experience: it is possible to leave your insurer out of the equation in that sense, sometimes the 3rd part insurer will offer for you to deal with your case for quick (cheap) settlement, particularly if there's an injury claim.
Also I have seen in the smallprint of my hire agreement that hire bills are settled at much less than the full quoted price.

However, one insurance company paid straight away for my helmet but 3 months later still chasing the cost of the bike and them denying their client was even there!

Also solicitors and insurers will happily spend weeks arguing over how much to give until they end up at a figure they all know is the right price in the first place because they have price guides like a glass's for injuries and such from obviously a huge pool of information.

Probably they are all in it together, definitely they are all ********s and know nothing and everything when it suits.

Everyone's seen the disclaimer to tell the truth when purchasing as insurance companies 'talk' to each other about client history.

Absolute horse manure, they can't even talk to each other properly sorting a common case out.