I own a vehicle delivery company and in 2019 one of my drivers was delivering a brand new van to a hire van company when he unfortunately reversed into another van whilst parking up at their compound, causing minor damage to both vans.

Having looked at the photos of the damage I estimated both vans would cost roughly £300 to £500 to repair each - so £600 to £1000 in total.

I spoke to someone at the hire van company and told them I would need them to send me an estimate before going ahead with the repair work. The reason for this is twofold: 1) To make sure that we weren't being ripped off, and 2) If it was to turn into an insurance claim, (our insurance excess is £1000 so I wasn't expecting to make an insurance claim for this), our insurers need to see an estimate before giving the go ahead for the repairs. If the insurers were to think the estimate was too high they would then send an engineer to assess the damage before either accepting or challenging the estimate.

Unfortunately the hire van company completely ignored my request to send an estimate and a couple of months later we received a bill for around £5000 (around 5 times more than I was expecting!)

I told them that as they had not followed correct procedure, we wouldn't be paying the repair costs. In some of the correspondence they have actually addressed us a "The hirer of the vehicles". I assume anyone renting from them would have signed a contract to say they would cover all repair costs but, as we weren't renting from (we were delivering a vehicle to them on behalf of a customer of ours) this does not apply to us.

They have been chasing us for the money ever since and the case has now progressed to County Court.

A couple of month back, just out of interest, I sent the photos of the damage to a repairer we have used a few times before. His reply, without knowing the repair work had already been carried out (he just thought I was asking for a quote on repairs that had only recently been damaged) was £300 for one van plus £200 for the other = £500 in total!

There is obviously a massive discretion in the £5000 they are trying to charge us and the £500 I was quoted so my question is - how do I stand legally on this considering they completely ignored my request for an estimate before commencing the repair work? Unfortunately, whilst I normally put absolutely everything down in writing, on this occasion, I requested the estimate over the phone and not through writing - which I fear may be my downfall! However, my argument would then be what's stopping them from going even more extreme and sending us a bill for £50,000 for example? Surely there's some law in place whereby an insurance company has to see an estimate first?

Any advice would very much be appreciated.

Ps. I haven't even informed my insurers about this yet because essentially I've just been telling the hire van company to go away when they've chasing me for payment. I also do not want to have a £5000 claim on my companies insurance history that should have only cost £500!