SALLY SORTS IT: Direct Line left us with a bill for £1,650 after the holiday in France. What can I do?

Last August we had a bump in our Volvo in the south of France. We had driven here for a family vacation and the accident happened the day before we were supposed to return home. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the car was out of control and two other cars were shunted in the incident.

Although we had car insurance with overseas extension and Green Flag breakdown cover, both through Direct Line, we had a hell of a time getting the insurer to get us and our car home and settle the claim. Can you help?

JM, London.

Sally Hamilton replies: A minor bump turned into a massive headache and resulted in a military-style exercise to get you and your family – plus West Highland Terrier Scout – back to Britain.

The first problem arose when Green Flag said you were not covered and that you had to arrange the recovery of the car yourself.

You couldn’t believe it. This was a public holiday in August and there was a shortage of rental cars, so you couldn’t find a replacement to drive home. And because you had your dog with you, you couldn’t take the plane. So you left the car in a French pound.

Then your partner crossed the Channel three times in 24 hours (once on the Eurostar, twice on the Eurotunnel) to collect her mother’s car in Hertfordshire and take the rest of you back home from Lille.

The family embarked on a nine-step journey, including a £70 taxi ride, two train journeys and the only car hire you could arrange (from Dijon to Lille).

By the time you contacted me, you had spent hours on the phone for days, moving between Direct Line departments (often being disconnected and having to start all over again). Three of those hours were spent in a parking lot in France, where it was 41 degrees Celsius.

After five days, when you finally got home, someone from Direct Line’s car insurance department told you that the foreign claims department was now processing your case, but nothing had yet been done to assess or repatriate the car.

It was still not clear to you who would have to foot the bill of over £1,000 – if at all – for the family’s repatriation.

You said you felt particularly sad because you had been purchasing the foreign use extension to your car policy at least once a year (and sometimes three times a year) for the past ten years – and this was the first time you had to use it to make.

It is not the first time that I have received complaints from holidaymakers after a car accident abroad. There is confusion about where responsibility lies when something goes wrong.

If a car is immobilized in an accident, the roadside assistance provider will, I’m afraid, wash a customer’s hands; an accident is not bad luck, even if it feels like it.

Yet you thought you had all the basic cover, even though your foreign car insurance had been extended. But a gap opened up in your cover when you were told the policy would pay to repatriate only the car and not its occupants. If the same incident had occurred in Britain, these costs would have been covered.

This was not made clear on the document you received upon purchase – the one you sent me – detailing the seven areas of coverage. All seven are fully applicable in Britain, but apparently not all in Europe.

Direct Line’s get-out clause is to use the wording at the end of this list: ‘Check your policy booklet for full details of what is and is not covered in each section.’

I didn’t think this was fair, and neither should you, so I asked Direct Line to investigate. After several weeks of cajoling by both you and me and reviewing your complaint, Direct Line finally agreed that the information in the document was ‘confusing’ and that you had received poor service.

It was agreed to cover the repatriation costs of £1,250 for you and your family, plus £400 for the home parking permits you needed for your temporary rental car while your Volvo was being repaired. It also paid £750 as an apology.

This was in addition to the estimated £10,000 cost of the claim, which was not in dispute, and included the repatriation of the Volvo and its repairs, and dealing with the two other vehicles involved, as well as domestic car rental costs.

You were both very happy with this result and now have your car back ‘spick and span’. You said that this experience taught you serious lessons about insurance and that you will examine coverage more closely in the future.

You even told me that you have already taken out a more expensive version of your foreign consumption cover (still with Direct Line) for future trips to France.

Direct Line customer service says it will provide feedback to its motor coverage business to help improve the confusing coverage document. In the meantime, you discovered the existence of a pet taxi service (petmovesabroad.co.uk) that you could have used to take Scout across the Channel. The next time!

I’ve just bought my fifth Amazon Kindle e-reader – for £179 – after my previous one stopped working. I have requested that Amazon use a new email address for my account as my previous one was from my NHS job, which is now inaccessible as I have recently retired after 44 years.

When my mother died in 2019, I lost interest in many things, including reading. I now feel like reading again, but can’t access my library of books on Kindle because I no longer have the email address they were associated with.

Amazon employees say there’s nothing they can do. Do they expect me to spend a fortune to buy those books again?

AF, Sheffield.

Sally Hamilton replies: At my request, Amazon made a good effort to resolve the issue. A few days later, it was confirmed that your defunct email had prevented your old account from being restored. But it has now created a new account, with your personal email address, from which you can now access your 240 lost books, worth an estimated £1,000. A £10 gift voucher was added as an apology.

An Amazon spokesperson said: ‘We regret that the customer experience in this case did not meet the high standards we expect. We have apologized and transferred their previous Kindle books to their new account.”

There will be another chapter, as currently you can only access the books through the Kindle app on your phone, which isn’t ideal. The technical authorities are still working on giving you access via your new Kindle.

May I suggest, dear readers, that it is better to avoid using a business email address when signing up for a service, because who knows when a job will end and access to important services will remain in limbo.