If you’ve been following the Acorn blog you know that we offer like-for-like courtesy cars in a range of circumstances, but particularly when you are in an accident that isn’t your fault.
But what if you are in an accident while you’re driving one of our courtesy cars?
It’s a reasonable question to ask in a world where things can purely and simply just go wrong, and there have been many instances where our customers have had an accident in one of our courtesy vehicles.
For many, the thought of having an accident in a courtesy car is a gut-wrenching one because most insurance companies are notorious for imposing on their customers an exorbitant excess for the repair of the vehicle.
An excess is the contribution you are required to pay to repair the damage done to the vehicle in an accident. In the context of this article, it’s the amount you must contribute to repair the damage done to a courtesy vehicle you were driving when an accident occurred.
To re-iterate, insurance companies are notorious when it comes to the excess they require their customers to pay. The excess they charge can often be as high as $1,000, or, if you choose to, you can pay an excess waiver fee (sometimes hundreds of dollars) to reduce the amount you might have to pay as an excess.
These mechanisms used by the insurance companies — charging high excesses and offering high excess waiver fees — have given insurance companies a bad name in recent times, and for good reason.
At Acorn, we do things a little differently. For starters, our excess doesn’t start at $1,000 and go up from there. Our default excess is a low $385, which we believe balances the need, on the one hand, for us to recover some money from you in the event of an accident you’re involved in while driving one of our courtesy vehicles and, on the other hand, for you to have the peace of mind in knowing that if you do have an accident in one of our courtesy vehicle you won’t then be hit with an unwarranted excess you cannot afford.
So if you’re in a car accident and, like us, you think it’s important to drive away in a courtesy vehicle without having to contend with the hidden fees, then give our friendly customer service team on 1300 22 67 67 and move on with Acorn.