Hello,
I have spoken with Fleet car who said they are waiting to hear back from HPI regarding the write off of the car.
They have said once they have had their response there are two options
option 1- the car is confirmed as written off, they claim on their insurance to give me money back (no mention of how much, I presume the full amount?)
option 2- the car is not classed as a write off (does anyone know if this is likely?) - they offer me a repair on the car or offer to buy it back. If they buy it back I have requested that by least my finance is paid off AND a reasonable deposit towards a new car, they suggested that they take £150 off the value of the car for every month I've had it, bearing in mind I've not had use of the car for the last 5 weeks too! I don't think that is reasonable, I have done 2500 miles in the car in 5 months, I hope we're making progress here, but now it all lies with HPI.
That seems rather (read, surprisingly) reasonable to me, even option 2 (assuming you can successfully argue that actually you've had it for 5 months - total time in garage/out of use.
Unfortunately you're just not going to get the full price back as you have had use of the car (assuming option 1 doesn't materialise). This also applies (to peoples immense surprise, it often seems) when people reject new cars after months of use.
I'm also struggling to see why you should get "a reasonable deposit towards a new car", though perhaps you could argue you're owed a little (perhaps less deduction?) if a courtesy car wasn't supplied. However, that might fall under "consequential" damages.