I've been offered a courtesy car while mine is being serviced.

 

The car is free, but I'll be charged insurance of around 20 pounds.

 

Is it normal practice to charge & is this a fair price ?

 

Appreciate it if someone could let me know.

It's optional at Seat, I never bother and take the risk

It's a tenner at DM Keith. I think you're being charged to reduce the insurance excess, not for the insurance itself. If that's the case, some excess cover policies for hire cars also cover courtesy cars: insurance4carhire.com certainly do on their annual policy, not sure about the daily one.

Check to see if your own policy covers hire/courtesy vehicles. Mine covers me automatically for cars up to 1.3l.

My dealer gives the option, free under their insurance (but it has a £500 excess) or pay and have no excess.

I have always accepted the risk. Tend to be more cautious in a car you are not familiar with.

Never been charged by my dealers - Beadles in Maidstone

We don't charge however our insurers will flag any drivers they have concerns about covering and notify us if they intend to reject cover.

In that case we still loan the car but the insurance is down to the driver and must be fully comp with a copy of the cover note provided.

The seat dealer I used to work at gave the option of either free courtesy car but £1000 excess or £20 with no excess.

This would be on the insurance certificate and in my case at the top below the Certificate number and the vehicle reg.

 

Any vehicle loaned to the policy-holder or any other person or classes of persons entitled to drive as described below, for a maximum of 7 days from a garage, motor engineer or vehicle repairer while the vehicle registration described above is being either serviced, repaired or having an Mot test.

Any vehicle loaned to the policyholder or any other person or classes of persons entitled to drive, as described below, by an Aviva nominated supplier as a result of a claim under this policy:

(1)    Whilst the vehicle registration described above is being repaired or replaced or

(2)    Following theft of the vehicle registration described above.

It's basically your Crash Damage Waiver. You'd be offered the same when hiring a car.

 

If you don't take it, have a good check around the car and report any damage that isn't marked on a damage sheet or made a note of. It will be your fault whether it was there when you got the car or not. I nearly got stung like that when I had a car from Avis last month. The car had a scratch that had been touched in but hadn't been marked on the sheet. I thought "Its been touched in. They must know about it." and drove off. Nope. It therefor became my fault. Thankfully I had taken the CDW and just had to sign a bit of paper and make up a little story.

 

Please take heed!

Thanks for all the replies.

I went to the Listers body shop today. Picked up a new car a week or so ago, and noticed the paint had ran round the fuel flap (not visible most of the time).

I noticed a sign saying there'd be a £10 per day charge for a courtesy car. (Also a 6 to 8 week wait!)

It's basically your Crash Damage Waiver. You'd be offered the same when hiring a car.

 

If you don't take it, have a good check around the car and report any damage that isn't marked on a damage sheet or made a note of. It will be your fault whether it was there when you got the car or not. I nearly got stung like that when I had a car from Avis last month. The car had a scratch that had been touched in but hadn't been marked on the sheet. I thought "Its been touched in. They must know about it." and drove off. Nope. It therefor became my fault. Thankfully I had taken the CDW and just had to sign a bit of paper and make up a little story.

 

Please take heed!

 

I've had a similar experience, but got the hire company staff back out and pointed out the chips and scratches they'd missed.  I made sure the car outline on the data sheet had everything I could see on it.  Being slightly paranoid about the 'we expect our cars to have minor marks and signs of wear' comments, I took photos too.  Nothing happened while the car was in my ward (of course), but I'm a great believer in the law of s0d.

 

Gaz

^{When I worked in a service department courtesy cars were free but customers had to arrange their own insurance and couldn't take the car unless we had the insurance certificate, it was a proper ball ache, customers would kick off, management would kick off, I used to loathe having to explain the reasons why and what we needed daily to people.}

 

^{However refreshingly my local skoda dealer don't charge anything for use of their vehicles.}

Edited 2 July, 20169 yr by jbyrnes82