Repairs never agreed to, a hire car refused, and a car written off in the end

Area:: Consumer
Decision body:: The Financial Ombudsman Service
Decided:: September 2026

On this page

A car raised on a lift inside a repair garage, the roller door open to a cobbled street

The issue

In December 2025 a policyholder's car was damaged in a motorway accident that was not his fault. The car was on hire purchase, and he claimed on his motor policy with First Central Insurance Management Limited (1st Central). 1st Central chose to repair the car, without asking him, on its own estimate. He wanted it treated as a total loss, and he wanted the hire car he had paid for as an add-on.

How it unfolded

December 2025. On the day of the accident he asked for a hire car. The handler's note records that he was told the hire car add-on applied only when a car was beyond economic repair.
January 2026. 1st Central authorised repairs on an estimate of £4,692, without asking him. He asked for the repairs to be put on hold, and they were.
January 2026. With the repairs on hold, 1st Central asked for the courtesy car back: the policy gave one only while the car was being repaired. From then until June he paid for hire cars himself.
January 2026. He was sent a version of the engineer's report written for customers, which listed the work but none of the costs.
January 2026. 1st Central's first final response rejected his complaint about the decision to repair. It was dated a year wrong. The Financial Ombudsman Service (the Service), where he had already taken the complaint, asked him to get the date corrected.
February 2026. A second final response upheld his complaint about delays at the start of the claim and poor communication. 1st Central apologised and paid £150, which reached his account that month.
February 2026. An entry in 1st Central's own claim notes, which he saw only later, read that he wanted a total loss "but we view as BER", the trade's shorthand for beyond economic repair.
April 2026. The Service's investigator did not uphold the complaint, 82 days after it reached the Service. The investigator then told him the Insurance Act 2015 applied only to business policies, and corrected that three days later. He asked for an ombudsman.
April 2026. With the repairs on hold, the repairer could no longer keep the car, and it went to the insurer's salvage depot.
June 2026. 1st Central's claims handler booked a hire car for him, and it ran until September.
June 2026. An independent engineer he instructed costed the repair at £26,504, 51.6 per cent of the car's value, and found the car not roadworthy because of suspension damage. That report, like 1st Central's own engineer's report of July, treated the car as repairable.
August 2026. He sent both reports to the Service. 1st Central then offered to settle the car as a total loss.

What was provided

His complaint to 1st Central, and its two final responses.
A complaint to the Service, recorded against First Central Underwriting Limited, the insurer behind the policy, for which 1st Central acted.
Written reasons for rejecting the investigator's view, and a request for an ombudsman.
Two supplementary submissions, the later one with the independent engineer's report and 1st Central's own engineer's report.
A complaint about how the Service handled the case, which a team manager did not uphold in May.
The argument: the repairs were authorised without his consent, the car should have been a total loss, and the hire car add-on should have applied.

How would you have decided?

Vote to see how other readers answered and what the decision body said.

He said the car should have been written off and the repairs needed his consent. The insurer said the policy let it choose, and its estimate put the repair well below the car's value; it apologised for delays and paid £150. Judging the insurer as it stood at its final responses in January and February, what should the ombudsman decide?

Uphold: the car should have been a total loss from the startDo not uphold: repair was a reasonable choice then, and £150 is fairUphold in part: £150 is too little for the service

Lost

The outcome

The ombudsman's final decision came in September 2026, 230 days after the complaint reached the Service. It ended: "For the reasons given above, I don't uphold this complaint".

The decision looked only at "the position it reached at the time of its final response letters in January and February 2026", and said: "I haven't made any finding about the matters that arose afterwards." On that footing it found that "the policy doesn't require First Central to obtain his consent before deciding how to settle an accepted claim", and that on the engineering evidence of the time First Central "had reasonable grounds for concluding that the vehicle could be repaired". It found the hire car benefit tied to a total loss, and the request to return the courtesy car fair once the repairs were on hold. Of the £150, it said: "I consider this fairly recognises the distress and inconvenience caused by the shortcomings it identified at the time."

Do you agree with the decision?

YesNo

What it means if you are in the same position

The insurer usually decides between repair and a write-off, and the policy may not need your consent. Read the claims section before you argue consent.
Ask for the costed engineer's report, not the version written for customers.
Read the wording of any hire car add-on. This one paid out only for a car beyond economic repair.
The ombudsman judges the firm at its final response. What happens to the car afterwards is a new complaint, to the firm first.
Get independent evidence early. His own engineer's report came after the investigator's view, and it too called the car repairable.
Check the date on a final response before you send it on. This one carried the wrong year.
A data request gets you data, not documents. When he asked 1st Central for his data in February, it answered on time but left out the engineer's costed report, the market valuation and the money figures in the claim notes. Its data protection officer wrote: "Please note it is not a right to documents."

Where it went next

He rejected the decision the same day, so it does not bind him. In September 1st Central settled the car as a total loss: it paid the finance company, which cleared the agreement, and the balance came to him. He did not buy the car back, and the insurer's salvage agent took it. The Independent Assessor, who reviews the Service's own conduct, accepted his request for a review in September. In October he corrected two statements of his own to the Assessor, with an apology: he had said he never received the £150 final response or the engineer's report, and he had received both. A separate complaint, about an extra £250 excess 1st Central said would apply if he used a garage of his own choosing, was still waiting for an investigator at the Service in October, and a new data request to 1st Central was due an answer that month. A related matter is before a court, and nothing about it is told here.

Updates

October 2026. Checked against the papers and emails in the matter. The story had put the courtesy car's return, and the start of the hire he paid for himself, in March to May 2026; 1st Central's claim notes and the Service's own view put both in January 2026, when the repairs went on hold, and the car went to the salvage depot in April. The story now also says that 1st Central booked a hire car for him from June, that the £150 reached his account in February, that the settlement cleared the finance agreement, and what the excess complaint is about.
October 2026. Reworded so that the matter is told by the person's role, with nothing to say whose it was. No fact changed.

Comments

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This story is one matter, told from its papers. It is general information, not guidance on your situation, and one outcome says nothing about another. Docketory is not a firm of solicitors.

This story may change. It is told from the papers as they stood when it was written. If new evidence comes to light, or a court, an ombudsman or a regulator decides something new about the matter, the story is updated, or the part now before a court is taken out, and the change is noted at the end of the story with the month it was made. The poll's question and answers never change, so a vote cast before an update stands as it was cast.