anyone ever scratched a hire car having not paid the damage waiver?

Duplicate

The latest in the tale….

Phoned them up this morning, and was very calm and collected. Reminded them of the wording on their Ts + Cs and how, technically they should tell me the total cost of the estimate before looting taking the excess from my account.

I’ve told them i fully accept them keeping the deposit, but to take an extra £650 with no warning is completely unreasonable. The manager agreed and is currently chasing the folks who took it to get it refunded.

I still expect them to go “oh well it’s £850 anyway so we’ll keep it” and for me to then open up a whole new can of worms with them about reasonable work.. but it feels like a step in the right direction right now.

Can you not get your own quotes etc?
I mean, I got 2 panels and part of a wing mirror sanded and resprayed for £300 recently!

DrP

(as it stands, I’m in a 14 plate hire car, arranged by the insurance, so am slightly anxious about taking it off the drive!!)

Can you not get your own quotes etc?

I imagine no otherwise you’d get ‘my mate Jamaal can do it for £150 all in’ 😉

£350 back so far. Just refunded.

Someone drove into our car, got a courtesy car for the week or so while it was being repaired, didn’t pay the waiver – I’m not ending up out of pocket for someone else bumping my car – took it back after ~30hours of driving it like a granny and constantly looking out the window making sure no-one had scratched it whilst parked outside our house.

If I ever get one again the waiver will be paid.

So £500- could it go up or is that their estimate?

DONK there are people on STW who say ‘why so precious/its only a car etc’.

What they fail to grasp is just because they don’t drive/or drive a shed- some people HAVE TO borrow an expensive car thats not their own, let alone care for their own property..

They reckon it’ll come down.

I’d rather pay £75 or £100 or whatever than possibly thousands.

It depends how shit/unlucky a driver you think you are and how often you rent cars!

tbh It’s a mugs game hiring a car and not getting all the insurances offered – yes, they often mean a serious price hike, but the alternative is a large charge to your credit card.

I’ve always taken them and never had a problem.

Psst, want to buy some magic beans sonny?

£350 back so far. Just refunded.

UPDATE:

So, I’ve heard nothing since the £350 was returned. Enterprise still have £500 of my money, they haven’t told me how much the repair is, they haven’t told me if it has been done. In fact, they haven’t told me anything.

It’s been a week since I wrote to them asking for clarification, but i have heard nothing.
On advice from the BVRLA (The BVRLA is the trade body for the vehicle rental and leasing sector)I’m about to raise a formal complaint with Enterprise. If that doesn’t work, I raise a formal complaint with the BVRLA who will act on my behalf.

Let’s see what happens.

Damage to bodywork is usually covered by the basic insurance thats included in the price. I reversed a hire car into a pillar when on holiday in spain a few years ago – no charge. My wife drove into a rut in a dirt road this year and put a large dent in the sill – no charge.

As the hire car person said when we picked the car up – scratches, dents, no charge.

I have an annual hire car excess policy anyway witch was £33 so that would cover any charge that isn’t covered by the insurers standard policy.

For Iceland we took out our own underbody / tyres / excess etc cover – with gravel roads and bonkers locals it seemed too risky not to (luckily didn’t need it, although saw a worrying number of crashes, rolled but still driving local 4x4s and various near misses!)

We went late summer, and pretty much every hire car was plastered in little “reported damage” stickers (because there are too many chips and dings to cover in detail on the paperwork). So if you picked up a few extra marks, carefully repositioning the odd sticker would probably solve the problem. Hire cars over there were a fortune anyway, and charging every hirer for minor marks would just be a blatant rip off (minor stuff just got repaired in one hit at end of season).

I wont hire a car now. Its just not worth the hassle. In our works carpark are a couple of mad batshit women who seem to think they don’t have to open their car door slowly or carefully. Then there are the odd visitors who seem to think pulling a handbrake turn etc is good ….and then there are the ones who are to see an adjoining business as they couldn’t see a speeding camera and…..cant see bloody cars in a carpark.

I hired a box van once. Opened a Volvo down one side with the front corner of the box just like a tin opener. Paid my £50 excess and walked away. Volvo was written off

I wont hire a car now. Its just not worth the hassle

Hired cars in Spain for the last 5 years, at least 3 times a year. Never had any hassle.

I wouldn’t want to limit my holiday experience with a self imposed ban.

Hired a small car in NZ (think it was a Daewoo matiz), took it on a long unsurfaced road. No issues whatsoever. Pull on to the tarmac road and within 1 mile a truck coming the other kicks up a stone that puts a massive crack in windscreen. We obviously didn’t take the glass cover being cash strapped backpackers. Handed the keys, car checked over, crack not noticed. Result!

Also hired a people carrier in Canada that we scratched and got away with.

I must be lucky with this sort of a thing.

The waivers are a mugs game – some quick maths last time I hired came out at crashing every 60 days to make it worthwhile. It’s just not. They kept “accidentally” adding it on at various points in the hire process too, to the extent that they handed over a card reader with the wrong amount on after I had said clearly several times I didn’t want it.

They clearly set the excess at an amount that will scare you so that you take out their CDW at the last minute.

If you’re not comfortable with the risk, as others have said, buy it seperately. Even those that have had to pay for a prang are still probably quids in over their lifetime for not paying the waiver.

yup I did it a few weeks ago in Antibes

€307 thank you very much

I did fortunately take out excess insurance with a separate company beforehand

Sixt were a complete disaster from start to finish, I won’t be hiring with them again

UPDATE: having raised my official complaint I’ve found out a lot more about what they’ve done from an actually helpful complaints manager. Firstly, I was told it was the Damage Recovery team, not the branch, who had taken my money and that was the delay in returning it. Well the DR team called me today to and confirmed money was taken by the branch; my friendly, ‘helpful’ manager chap. He’d lied about who had taken the money. It was absolute bunkum.
Also, it turns or that he wasn’t actually the manager as he claimed – he was the assistant manager. The manager was the girl who had repeatedly said she’d pass on the message; all of which were ignored. Again, all bullshi* from enterprise.

The complaint was taken up to area manager level today by the Damage Recovery team who’d been royally dumped on by the branch manager. The result? I’ve just had a phone call to say all the money taken PLUS the deposit would be returned today.

I suspect they’ll still come back with a damage quote, though I think I’m within my rights to ask that they forget that as a goodwill gesture. I’ll wait and see.

Still, another positive step.