You have been given a credit hire vehicle. Unfortunately when you took delivery and signed for it you almost certainly agreed to their terms and conditions for offering you the vehicle which means you agreed to pay any costs incurred if liability was found to be against you at a later date.

as to whether that contract is enforceable I am obviously unable to comment without sight of it and more details of the circumstances surrounding the case. You should be aware that you could be successful on the liability issue and still be lumbered with much of the credit hire charge. However you may well have a case against your insurer if they recommended the accident manager and they were acting as an agency on their behalf.

credit hire vehicle charges payable by insurers are capped by the industry -- the rates they will pay are in the HJ FaQ -- but they are still extremely high and if liability goes against the hirer (or partially goes against the hirer) the cost can run to several thousand pounds.

Similarly even if liability is 100% in your favour there is a duty to mitigate costs so you and.or your insurer could be liable for any falsely escalated claim,

accident management and credit hire is not intrinsically wrong - there is a fair and equitable principle in having an equivalent vehicle if an accident was not your fault and in some cases - plated taxi hire for example - it is vital if someone is to continue to earn a living. but the industry has attracted rogues and even seemingly legitimate businesses have become involved in dubious practices.

Watch out for the following indications of possible sharp practice which may leave you with a big bill to pay when the claim is settled:

• Replacement vehicle hire offered when car is trivially damaged and drivable
• Repairs seem to be being unreasonably delayed
• Replacement vehicle is significantly better than that which is damaged
• credit hire offered when liability is disputed or unclear (a good accident manager will guarantee that they will cover all the costs if liability is found against you provided you have not deceived them as to the circumstances of the accident - this is not the same as the £10 liability insurance policy which leaves the liability with you if -- as often happens -- the policy does not pay out)

examples of dubious practice involve the handing out of a credit hire vehicle to the non-fault hirer on every occasion. Drivers need to be aware that insurers will only cover hire costs when the damaged vehicle is off the road. Insurers will not pay if it is safely drivable save for the period when repairs are actively taking place. Thus if the repair to a vehicle is a scuff to a wheel-arch costing less than £200 to fix and the credit hire comes to £4500 (as occurred in one recent case recently advised to HJ) the non-fault driver will end up picking up the hire tab.

Similarly as the accident management company is usually involved in the provision of both hire and repairs the temptation is to slow down the repair of the vehicle to falsely escalate the hire charges and thus further profit from the incident. again the non--fault driver is at risk of paying the escalated hire bill.

The great irony in credit hire is that as with personal injury claims, while the insurer is happy to complain when they are on the "wrong" side of the claim supporting the at-fault driver but seem happy to take the very high commissions payable when their driver is not at fault.

They have thus been very much complicit in escalating the costs surrounding all accident claims by promoting the use of "their" accident managers when an accident takes place without revealing they are taking a fat bonus for doing so.

The motorist pays in terms of higher premiums in the end (as usual).