I will keep this as brief as possible but I thought you might appreciate some clarification of what goes on behind the scenes with these 'after accident' claim firms. As an insurance broker for 30 years I have seen huge changes in the way claims are dealt with. We used to write and claim against third parties for our clients ourselves, free of charge, and, if it was really necessary, our clients would hire their own car at a low price and we would claim it back. It was all very simple and kept costs low. Insurers then started to introduce Helplines for their customers to report claims and Approved Repairers to monitor and speed up repairs. The clients would then contact their insurers direct to report the claim and we would offer them assistance if it was non-fault. The job of the insurer was only to repair the car or write it off. For a long time legal expenses companies have existed to assist with uninsured losses that might include car hire and injury compensation and to be fair many of them did it quite properly with only the interests of the client at heart and brokers like ourselves used them where necessary. Sadly, what we have recently seen is a big rise in the credit hire firms who steal clients from under our noses by contacting them giving the impression that they are acting on behalf of their own insurer. The client often ignorant of what is going on signs the papers and is left with a very expensive hire car. When it all goes horribly wrong no-one can help the client because the case is no longer theirs to deal with. Many of these less scrupulous firms have actually been passed the clients information by employees of their own insurer or the repairer without the brokers or clients consent or knowledge. In many cases the client has paid for proper legal expenses insurance only to find that another firm has got to them first. Why? Because of the large amounts of commission these firms pay. A garage who's only job is to repair a car and give a free courtesy car passes on the details to credit hire firms in return for large commission cheques and the client gets a hire car instead of the courtesy car. This simply increases premiums because the money is ultimately paid by insurance companies. Ironically, insurance company employees have also started to pass details to credit hire companies too because they get back handers for doing nothing other than pass on information. Lastly, the genuine fair legal expenses companies (and they do exist) should not be confused with the ambulance chasers who are in it to claim as much car hire as they can. The proper companies will be underwritten so that the client will never be at risk even if the costs cannot be recovered and they will keep their hire and legal rates reasonable. We spend a lot of our time educating our clients to understand the difference between the firms they should be dealing with and the firms who will ring them out of the blue offering assistance. I would like to bet that the vast majority of the people who contact you to say they have had problems with these car hire firms were actually ambushed.
I hope this helps.