Your claim got nobbled by a credit hire outfit who made an excessive amount of money out of the repair and the hire of the car. Known as ‘Cash for Crash’ it not only has repercussions for the policyholder but is putting up insurance premiums for all of us. Some people working for insurers and repairers are on ‘incentives’ to hand the matter over to credit hire / accident management operators. You can now legally refuse their offers. To the great benefit of all of us, a recent Leeds County Court of Appeal Judgement (Copley v Lawn and Maden v Haller 17-6-2009) determined, “…it is not unreasonable for a claimant to reject or ignore an offer from a defendant (or his insurers) which does not make clear the cost of hire to the defendant for the purpose of enabling the claimant to make a realistic comparison with the cost which he is incurring or about to incur.” And “…following Strutt v Whitnell, if a claimant does unreasonably reject or ignore a defendant’s offer of a replacement car, the claimant is entitles to recover at least the cost which the defendant can show he would reasonably have incurred; he does not forfeit his damages claim altogether.” And, “…the general rule that the claimant can recover the “spot” or market rate of hire for his loss of use claim is upheld, unless and to the extent that a defendant can show that, on the facts of a particular case, a car could have been provided even more cheaply than the “spot” or market rate.”