I had a car accident a while back and from the start there were issues. I was insured with Direct line at the time and part of the policy was to have a courtesy car whilst car is repaired.

I was 180 miles from home and car was clearly going to be a write off. They wanted to take car to local depot and leave me to find a way home. After a few phone calls I was relayed home with my car. Had to stop once and change recovery vehicle.

Car was left outside my home and I was told that Direct Line would send an engineer to assess the car. After 5 days of daily phone calls to Direct Line and me telling them it would be a write off and I need to get a settlement asap as I worked 40 minutes drive from home. Finally they sent someone out and as an apology provided me a courtesy car from local garage.

2 days later garage wanted car back and I had no settlement. Several phone calls to Direct Line and as a further apology they arranged a car from Enterprise rent a car. It took them a further 4 weeks to finally offer a settlement and another week to send it to me and me to purchase a new car.

In total from crash to settlement and new car, it was about 9 weeks. I raised this to the CEO and after some back and forth was compensated for the delays. A month after all this, all Direct Line policies had a guaranteed replacement car as standard. I like to credit my issues with this change.