Recently a customer visited our premises and did not bring his driving license when he came to drop off his vehicle and collect the Courtesy Car. His insurance company, which was providing the cover for the Courtesy Car said it was ok to release the vehicle.

Is it OK to allow our customer to use a Courtesy Car if we have not seen their license?

We appreciate your bulletins, they are really helpful and answer some of the problems we face, it’s great that they are posted on the www.retailmotorlaw.co.uk website so we can read them again when needed.

Just wondering what your thoughts are with regard to this situation. We are an independent repairer with no ‘dodgy’ agreements with insurers. We have built a reputation in our local area for quality repairs and support the community in a number of ways.

Recently a number of customers, who have either used our services before or have been recommended by family or friends, have been told by their insurance company that they cannot use our services and must use a repairer nearly 50 miles away.

There is nothing in their insurance policy which states that they must use a specified repairer, what can we or the customer do?

Last week’s bulletin was well received with a number of positive comments. RML would like to thank the repairer which provided the following important information, which relates to the same situation.

Just want to thank you for the bulletins, which I find very informative and are beneficial to the body repair industry and also main dealers.

I was not as surprised as some may have been that some work providers are getting creative with their invoicing in order to be able to invoice the at fault party a larger amount than had been paid once the credit note has been issued.

Many years ago we were required to operate a similar scheme with a paint company, who we were contracted with. We were instructed to invoice at one price then create a credit note to ‘discount’ the work we had undertaken to the actual amount which we were going to get paid.

The ‘scheme’ was very similar to that described in the bulletin and caused me concern at the time, thankfully we did not operate like this for long because the ‘scheme’ was stopped by the work provider.

We had a contract direct with an insurance company to repair their policyholder’s vehicles. Unfortunately the contract was terminated when the insurer changed their network, we now work for the same insurer through a claims management company.

I am really concerned about the latest request, we have been asked to invoice non fault work with nearly a 62% increase of the fault work hourly rate. There is also no discount for paint or parts. We have been instructed to issue a credit note for the difference between the non fault and fault rate. We don’t want to lose the work but what we are being asked to do feels morally and ethically wrong, what should we do?