In the hours after a non-fault accident, most people get offered a car by somebody. What nobody explains is that the offer could be coming from any one of four different parties, and they are not equivalent. One of them may leave you in a hatchback when you drive a van. Another may take the vehicle back the moment your repair stalls waiting for a part.
Here is who each provider is, what they actually give you, and how to work out which offer is worth accepting.
Who can provide a replacement car after a non-fault accident?
Four parties can provide one:
- Your own insurer, if you bought a policy with courtesy car cover.
- The repairing garage, from its own small pool of loan cars.
- A credit hire company, which supplies a like-for-like vehicle and recovers the cost from the at-fault insurer.
- The at-fault driver's insurer, offering you a vehicle directly to keep the cost of your claim down. This is known in the industry as intervention.
The important point is that only one of those four is under any obligation to give you something equivalent to your own car. The others are giving you what they have available, or what keeps their own costs lowest.
Your own insurer
Your insurer can provide a courtesy car if, and only if, you bought that cover as part of your policy. It is not automatic and it is not included as standard on most policies.
Where it is included, the cover is usually written as a specific class. A policy that promises a "Group A courtesy car" means a small hatchback, regardless of what sits on your driveway. It also normally runs only while your own car is in active repair, so if the garage is waiting three weeks on a part, you can lose the vehicle during the wait.
There is a second cost worth knowing about. Going through your own policy for a non-fault accident usually means paying your excess first and putting your no-claims discount at risk, even though the accident was not your doing. You can normally recover the excess later, but you have to fund it in the meantime.
The garage repairing your car
The repairing garage may lend you a car from its own courtesy fleet. This is the simplest option and often the quickest, because the car is sitting on the forecourt.
The trade-off is choice. A body shop keeps a handful of small, cheap, easy-to-insure runarounds. You get whatever is free that day. If you drive a Transit, a plated taxi, or an automatic because that is what your licence permits, the garage loan car may be no use to you at all.
Like insurer courtesy cars, garage loan cars are usually tied to the repair being physically underway. If your car is declared a total loss, the loan car normally goes back, and that is often exactly the moment you most need one.
A credit hire company
A credit hire company supplies the replacement vehicle on credit and recovers the charges from the at-fault driver's insurer, rather than asking you to pay and claim it back later.
This is the only route built around giving you an equivalent vehicle. The provider is supposed to match your own car on class, size, transmission and practical use, which is what the industry calls like-for-like. Drive a Sprinter, get a Sprinter. Drive a licensed taxi, get a plated taxi. Drive an automatic, get an automatic.
There is no upfront cost, no excess and no deposit, and it does not touch your own policy or your no-claims discount. We set out the full detail, including the honest caveats about when you could become liable, on our will I have to pay page, and the mechanics on our how credit hire works page.
The at-fault driver's insurer
The insurer of the driver who hit you may contact you directly and offer to arrange a replacement vehicle. This is called intervention, and it is a legitimate practice, not a scam.
The motive is straightforward. If that insurer supplies the car itself, it controls the cost. If you go through a credit hire provider instead, the insurer receives a bill it did not set. Neither of those things is sinister, but it does mean the offer is shaped by their budget rather than by what you drive.
Intervention offers are often perfectly reasonable, particularly if you drive a standard car and the repair is quick. They become a problem when the vehicle offered is smaller than your own, when the offer comes with pressure to decide immediately, or when it is bundled with questions about liability before liability has been established. We cover how this plays out on our intervention and recovery page.
Which one should you accept?
Work it backwards from what you actually need the car to do.
- A garage or insurer courtesy car is usually fine if you drive a standard hatchback or saloon, the repair is straightforward, and a few days in something smaller will not disrupt your life or your income.
- Credit hire is the right call if you drive anything specific. A van, a licensed taxi or PHV, an electric vehicle, a vehicle you need for work, or anything where a small petrol hatchback does not replace your day. It is also the better route if your car is likely to be written off, or if the repair looks like it will run long.
- An intervention offer is worth taking seriously if the vehicle genuinely matches your own. Compare what is being offered against what you drive, and do not feel rushed into answering.
The mistake we see most often is accepting the first vehicle offered because it arrived first, then discovering a week later that it cannot carry the tools, take the child seats, or work the platform shifts.
Do you have to accept the car the other insurer offers?
No. You are entitled to consider an offer and decline it if the vehicle is not genuinely equivalent to your own.
You should not simply ignore an offer, because you are expected to act reasonably and keep the cost of your claim down. That duty is called mitigation, and it matters. But acting reasonably does not mean accepting a supermini when you drive a Luton van. Declining an unsuitable vehicle politely, and being able to say why it was unsuitable, is a reasonable act.
If you are unsure whether an offer is genuinely like-for-like, say you want to consider it and take advice before agreeing. A legitimate provider on either side will not object to that.