Hi,
I seem to have become an unwitting victim of some outrageous behaviour by a large multinational car rental company - who shall obviously remain nameless.
I work for a large electronics company who have a contract with said rental company. We do not use their insurance, but my company's own insurance instead.
About 3 (three!) months ago I rented a car for travel on company business (something I do very frequently). A couple of days ago I received a letter from the rental company's claims department accusing me of having damaged the car rented on that occasion. They attached "evidence" - namely a pre-rental damage report (showing none) and a post-rental report indicating a "rubber type" scrape all along one side of the car. The joke is that this is the first I've heard about it. Since we deposit the cars in the company car park for the rental company to collect later there isn't normally a face-to-face handover when you return a rented car.
Clearly they are trying it on and hoping that my company policy will just pay out without disputing it (it's a small sum - only £70). I replied denying any responsibility, to which they have replied that I need to provide evidence to prove I didn't do it!!!
I have now notified my HR department, but am unsure how I should proceed. I expect them to just tell me to claim on company insurance. However I'm worried what it will do to my personal car insurance and my NCB. Don't I have to tell my insurance company of any accident claim, regardless of fault?
I think I have to get my company to somehow get the rental company to withdraw the claim altogether - is this the right strategy, and do I have any chance?
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Felix
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I had exactly the same scenario - 2 weeks afte returning a car I was notified of the damage to a tyre and alloy requiring both to be replaced at a cost of approx £400.
At no time had I had a puncture and replaced the wheel.
I refuted it and asked why it had taken them 2 weeks to discover the damage - I had the return car slip with the return mileage.
I requested the current mileage, when it had been noticed, by whom, at what location etc etc
I said I expected to hear from them within 7 days otherwise I would assume the matter was closed. I copied the company fleet management and the personnel dept just for emphasis that it had nothing to do with me.
The hire car in question a VW Passat was due to go back to VW or auction as the closing mileage I had was nigh 12,000 and a sticker on the car said it had to be returned by 14,000 from memory. May be it was at the auction prep that they discovered the whell and thought they would try it on.
I never heard another word from the car hire co.
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While we're talking about car rental scams here's another one
www.tripso.com/archives/2005/11/carscam.html
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Well it sounds pretty foolish of the rental company to pull this one when they are getting plenty of repeat business from a business account. You could quite easily move the account elsewhere.
I always check the car over before and after and do not to the "oh you can go and we'll send the receipt in the post" thing that they suggest. I would suggest next time that perhaps you say to the collector of the car that they must come to you at reception to collect the keys and receive a sign off before taking the car back.
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Felix ? why don?t you just pass this on to whoever handles the relationship between your company and the hire company. The point of these deals is to allow you to get on with your job, not spend time on trivial little things like this. My company would probably have just paid this, without even asking me (which is why these firms try it on) they take the view that it would waste hundreds of pounds checking it out.
Most large company?s have pretty big insurances excesses ? ours is £1000 ? and some big companies only insure 3rd party. It?s *most* unlikely that your company would be able to make a £70 insurance claim, so I wouldn?t worry for a moment about it affecting your own insurance.
If you do have to get dragged into sorting this out, then the fact that they?ve taken 3 months to get back to you would be enough on its own to dismiss their claim. If your company gets bolshy about it, then just insist it was fine when you left it the car-park and you can?t be expected to be responsible for it after that.
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until recently i worked for ENTERPRISE car hire, we also supply cars to the public and to corporates, when we deliver a vehice we let the RENTER examine the vehicle for faults ect then we would mark it down on the form ( something i did not agree to so in the end i would check the car over show the customer then mark it down.
when it comes to collect we go over it again looking for scratches dents ect, but we do allow for hair line marks, rubber marks or something we can t cut out ourselves.
but at the end of the day it was how we worked at our depot and our routine i know of others in rental depots charging for the smallest of marks because....
ALL HAVE TARGETS TO BE MET, INCOME REVENUE ECT IF IT MEANS CHARGING THEN THEY WILL IF THE DEPOT FAILS THEY SACK THE MANAGER AND GET SOMEONE ELSE IN BELIEVE YOU ME, I SEEN THEM COME AND GO AND I ONLY WORKED FOR 6MONTHS.
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oh and before i forget the whole enterprise car hire fleet are 3rd party so, any damage its paid by enterprise not the insurance, so thats why they are too happy to pass it on to the customer then to themselves.
as to moving to different hire firms well better the devil you know and enterprise is so big world wide that frankly they arnt worried.
i know for a fact that they buy all there cars well below book value rent them for 2 years and ACTUALLY sell tem for more THAN originally paid for them.
imagine the revenue they get per year!
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- Fine if this is a rental through your employer, but what if the rental company tries it on with a private renter?
I always feel obliged to accept their extortionate UK£15/day Super CDW to prevent them trying a scam like this. Then of course the quoted rate when booking will bear no resemblance to the final bill I pay.
I've just pre-booked a Focus for UK£82 for 3 days. Add UK£45-odd CDW, plus VAT, and some other hidden surcharge and I'll be near to UK£150.
I once pre-booked a car for a week on the web and was obliged to pay UK£8/day plus VAT to add a second driver once I arrived at the counter to pick it up...! Over UK£60 more to pay straightaway!
We seem to miss the biggest scam of car rental companies though: why do they invariably add a hefty "Airport location" surcharge of around UK£20 per rental? Why should it be more costly for them - or us - to park/collect a car out at an airport where there is loads of space, as opposed to a city centre location? And of course most of their business must come from airports... Grr!
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My first recourse will probably be to hand it over to my company to deal with on their insurance. But my point is, this is such a trivial amount of money that they will just pay up. But are you sure that I'm not required to declare this on my OWN insurance? One or two colleagues have suggested I might need to and, when I logged onto Direct Line, they do ask the question about what accidents you've been involved in irrespective of fault, not "what claims have you made". Of course I could choose not to declare it, but come the day I really do have to claim, I'm worried this incident might invalidate it. That's why I think I need my company to fight this on my behalf.
Or am I being unduly paranoid?
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If you hand it back to your company and they choose to pay it then that's up to them. My view is that I wouldn't see that as being involved in an accident. As far as you're concerned the car was fine when you left it so it's not your concern.
It's a similar situation to lease cars going back - there's always some random figure for re-instatement that the leasing company dreams up. I only found out by chance a couple of years ago that if it's a couple of hundred pounds the firm just pays it. I don't regard that has an insurance incident.
I would reiterate my earlier comments that I cannot imagine that your company would have a policy that will allow them to make an insurance claim for £70.
*If* the company is making a claim on their insurance then you would know about it, because you'd be asked to fill in a claim form (or at least provide details of the 'incident').
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If you hand it back to your company and they choose to pay it then that's up to them. My view is that I wouldn't see that as being involved in an accident. As far as you're concerned the car was fine when you left it so it's not your concern. It's a similar situation to lease cars going back - there's always some random figure for re-instatement that the leasing company dreams up. I only found out by chance a couple of years ago that if it's a couple of hundred pounds the firm just pays it. I don't regard that has an insurance incident. I would reiterate my earlier comments that I cannot imagine that your company would have a policy that will allow them to make an insurance claim for £70. *If* the company is making a claim on their insurance then you would know about it, because you'd be asked to fill in a claim form (or at least provide details of the 'incident').
Thanks, I'll give it a go. It still worries me that the rental company have an "accident report form" bearing my name though, which may one day come back to haunt me.
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Only £70, count yourself lucky. I had an incident with a rental company that they were trying to get over £400 out of my company. Had a car replaced due to milage (was on long term rental for me and I was doing high milage), got in new car (Focus) they were busy and just haded over the keys - I did however check EVERTHING that is marked on the sheet (spent too long delivering trucks for rental companies and know all the scams), after a day or so I realised that the A/C had never worked, phoned them up and they told me to take it to a dealer to look at it (normaly would have told them it was there problem, but was working next to one at the time)Ford said pipe had broken, common problem due to location, £400 to repair. Renatal Company refused to get repair done and then said I must have caused it!!! I pointed out that checking the A/C does not appear on their checklist so it is their problem and my company would not pay - big rows ensued, but Royalmail stuck by me and refused to pay them. Ended up getting better cars from another rental co. and as a side point SWMBO was the rental manager there, so ended up with her as well - thinking about it, should have agreed to the £400, would have beenm cheaper in the long run!!!!!
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