Being Charged for Damage on Rental Vehicles - Age Report on Europcar

try2bhelpful on 06/12/2017 - 10:43
Last edited 06/12/2017 - 11:00 by 1 other user

There was an article in The Age saying that Europcar has been incorrectly charging people for pre-existing damage to vehicles. (Not the first time I have heard that).

Just a reminder to people to document the condition of their rental vehicle before driving off (I think this would be particularly important if renting moving vans, they are often pre-banged up). When we were in France recently we photographed the rental car from all angles and took a close up of existing scrape marks before we drove off. We were with Avis and we had no issues with them.

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Comments

  • HighAndDry on 06/12/2017 - 11:01
    +3

    I'd thought that was common knowledge. Usually I do a walk-around video of the car before I get in (so you can see it's still at the pick up lot), close-up photos of existing damage, and obviously make sure any significant damage is circled/listed on the condition report.

    That's a given with renting any car or other vehicle (hell, even leasing a property is the same).

    • [Deactivated] on 06/12/2017 - 11:31
      +4

      Only significant damage is circled? HELL NO! I get them to mark every last little piece of dust!

      • HighAndDry on 06/12/2017 - 13:17
        +2

        Heh, then wipe the dust off and charge the car hire company for improving the car when you return it…..

  • hell0 on 06/12/2017 - 11:03

    I have to say, once I hired a van from Europcar and my garage door closed onto the bonnet, but as the door didnt have a rubber seal it made contact from metal door to metal bonnet and left a thin line across the bonnet. I was devastated but when I went back they said dont worry about it and didnt charge me anything. So for me these guys get an A+ still.

    • aoeueoa on 06/12/2017 - 11:19
      +3

      That just shows how poor their practices are. Next guy or next manager who sees the car might take issue with it and then try to blame it on the last customer. With no paperwork trail for when the damage occurred it's going to hard for anyone to prove what really happened. Ultimately the customer will lose.

      • k-rokfm on 06/12/2017 - 11:34
        +4

        Except when you pick up any rental car you should be filling out a pre-inspection leaflet, noting down any damage - which would be picked up on the PRE inspection for the next hirer.

        Also to be noted, I hired a van from Thrifty and they told me they dont really mind any dints coming from inside the van to out (IE pushing out) but any dints on the outside is what they have issues with

    • hippyhippy on 06/12/2017 - 14:48
      +2

      That is my experience also.. They won't bother with minor marks. I will still do the walk around. Better to be safe than sorry

  • toniyellow on 06/12/2017 - 11:04

    Interesting read in light of this post https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/340365

    Your article from today also mentions people who did cause damage but were overcharged for repairs that sometimes weren't even performed. Important to ask for receipts if they are charging you for repairs. If more people ask, if will become harder for them to keep getting away with dodgy behaviour.

    • HighAndDry on 06/12/2017 - 14:44

      but were overcharged for repairs that sometimes weren't even performed.

      Just FYI - this is perfectly fine. If you damage something, you have to pay for the amount of the damage. Nothing - anywhere - says that the person has to use that money on repairs.

      E.g. You run into a car, dent it. Assuming no liability issues and no argument over how much to fix it (say $500), you pay the other guy $500 and that's that. They can do whatever they want with the $500, they don't have to use it to fix the car.

      • toniyellow on 06/12/2017 - 15:57

        There is no mention in the article that they must repair the car, rather that they commonly don't, and use this as an opportunity to trick more than one person into paying inflated damages for a car they never take off the road. Circling back to the idea of taking detailed photos and getting a receipt or itemised quote if they pursue you for something.

        • HighAndDry on 06/12/2017 - 16:09

          I was in that thread too. There's two issues there:

          1. The OP in that thread was being charged the insurance excess. Insurance excesses don't depend on the amount of the damage, just that there is damage. That's literally what insurance is.

          2. The article is talking about car rental companies not charging the excess, but charging the maximum amount allowed under the car rental contract for any damage, even if the damage didn't reach the maximum chargeable.

          Point 1 is perfectly fine. Point 2 is the dodgy part, but that has nothing to do with "for repairs that sometimes weren't even performed" - even if the repairs were performed, overcharging would still be wrong. Even if repairs weren't performed, they can still charge how much the damage would be to repair.

  • craigmate on 06/12/2017 - 11:28

    I couple of years ago, I rented a car in New Zealand from AVIS. On the first day as we were driving, a stone hit the bottom left hand side of the windscreen and create a chip about 3-4cm..
    For the next few days we contemplated getting it repaired or just returning it and seeing what happened.
    In the end we just returned it, the location which we returned it (Auckland airport) was undercover, so it was a bit dark and the person who took the car didn't even look at it.
    We never got anything charged on our credit card.
    Considering a cracked windscreen makes a car un-roadworthy, I was surprised nothing happened.

    I have mostly used AVIS for rentals in Australia, and have never had any issues with them..

    • godofpizza on 06/12/2017 - 12:18
      +1

      i was in NZ - queenstown on holiday a few years ago and watched a couple trying to do a 3 point u-turn and hit the side of their rental RV onto a stone wall.
      thank wasn't you was it?

      • craigmate on 06/12/2017 - 12:20
        +1

        Nah, we only had a small car, and it was in the north island..

  • bobbified on 06/12/2017 - 12:18
    +2

    Usually when I hire a car, I'd go around the car and take pictures then go back to the counter and show them.

    I hired a van once and on the back of the condition report, there was a ruler printed. I put that against each mark I could find and took a picture to show that the size of the mark.

    I assumed that that's what the printed ruler was there for. There was also a note stating that only marks over 10mm would be considered, but I took pictures of those anyway. I made sure I took a picture of everything. When I showed the lady at the counter how I used the ruler, she was really surprised because "no one had ever done that before".

    There are dangers of trying to document everything though. If they decide to charge for some damage on the car and that doesn't damage doesn't appear in your "comprehensive" condition report or pictures, you may have a bit of difficulty arguing that the damage was already there.

    • HighAndDry on 06/12/2017 - 14:45
      +1

      That's why you take a video/wider photos of the car so that if it comes to that, you can go back and refer to those.

  • PerthectDeal on 06/12/2017 - 12:46
    +1

    Interesting topic,

    like most of you guys, I take video and photos of the car but always make sure damage is marked on the car detail form. This is usually a pain as some places you have to go back to the desk and wait to do this or find an employee in the car lot.

    My question is has anyone used photo or video evidence to reverse a charge? I don't know if it would be any use to prove yourself. Any video or photos can have the date/time altered. How could you prove it was take before using the car not after?

    • HighAndDry on 06/12/2017 - 14:46

      Any video or photos can have the date/time altered.

      Nothing that doesn't leave a record of it. Generally if it's date-stamped, that's taken to be accurate.

      • PerthectDeal on 06/12/2017 - 23:35

        but on any camera or phone etc you can change the time date to when you picked up the car and then record with this false date stamped date. The only thing is some hire companies return the car to a different section and this would then prove that the video/photos were taken at the start of hire if you can see the background of the car hire yard.

  • Ryanek on 06/12/2017 - 13:42
    +2

    Don't forget to check (or take picture) of the actual kilometrage of the vehicle to the one they note down on the rental sheet. Avis attempted to charge me an extra 500kms until I showed them the picture.

    • JimmyF on 06/12/2017 - 14:16

      Whats stopping you just taking a picture after driving 500kms and say that was the starting kms?

      Never leave until the forms are correct.

      • Ryanek on 06/12/2017 - 14:27
        +1

        Timestamp

        • JimmyF on 06/12/2017 - 21:48

          what time would you like the picture to say? Timestamps can be faked in about 2 seconds!

        • PerthectDeal on 06/12/2017 - 23:38
          +1

          @JimmyF: Timestamps can be faked in about 2 seconds!

          Exactly, make sure you get background detail of the car yard on the video as this may help prove it.

        • Ryanek on 07/12/2017 - 08:20

          @JimmyF: I'm just offering advice mate, why so agro. This isn't CSI, all they needed to do was verify the KM's the last time the vehicle was checked in.

          In my case, the office was a far walk from the van pickup and I was already running late. Taking a picture is a good alternative.

        • JimmyF on 07/12/2017 - 09:28

          @Ryanek: and I was offering my advice just like you had.

          Correct, this isn't CSI, and a picture might not always work, as per your example, Whats stopping you just taking a picture after driving 500kms and saying that was the starting kms? Nothing really.

          Whats stopping them accepting this picture? Again nothing.

          Its all 'risk' in what you want to accept to save walking back.

  • JimmyF on 06/12/2017 - 14:15
    +1

    Europcar are crooks, I stopped hiring with them. I've heard of many been hit with the damage they didn't do on the internet. I've never had that myself, but I'm had this

    Giving hire forms with no damage marked, go to car, looks like its gone to hell and back, go back. Oh sorry, corrected form making all the damage and marks. This happens just about EVERY time I've hired. So by going back and getting the form corrected, I believe has stopped them pulling the damaging crap on me.

    Cars just dirty and not cleaned correctly inside or out.

    I've had this one happened many times, Booked a certain type of car, get there on their website (sometimes only days before), sorry that VW you booked we don't have, have a Hyundai instead. Why I have nothing against a Hyundai, I paid 'extra' for a premium car, and VW and Hyundai are NOT interchangeable in my books.

    I could have booked that Hyundai via someone else CHEAPER.

    I've also had them not supply the right size of car at all, one xmas I booked for 2 weeks rental, rock up and got sorry, that size isn't available, here is a smaller car. I'm like I booked it 4 months ago, how can you not have it ready!?

    I did get a reduction in the rental due to having a smaller car, but still.

    So basically I stopped renting with them, sent a complaint in, and got zero reply. So that sealed the deal for good!

    • raiseyoursteaks on 11/12/2017 - 23:52
      +2

      yeah hate europcar too. Shit service here in australia.

      • JimmyF on 12/12/2017 - 09:39
        +1

        sadly the service in Australia makes me question even renting overseas from them. So they lost all my business.

  • TheBilly on 06/12/2017 - 20:52

    Just a reminder to people to document the condition of their rental vehicle before driving off

    I tend to do this also, it also helps if your phone has a date/time stamp app for safe measure.

  • CheapskateQueen on 06/12/2017 - 23:03
    +1

    Car hire companies are the worst.

    Used various companies over the years, Avis, Budget, Europcar,hertz,random RentalAirport car hire off skyscanner.Never actually had any damage or problems so can't rate them.

    Although interestingly, with Budget the other day when we were checking the car and taking photos of anything we noticed,they told us they weren't concerned with anything smaller than a keycard bcos it was fair wear and tear.

    No one had said that to me before. Not sure if it's a universal thing.

    Key drop off was also just a box so no one checked the car when i returned it. As far as i was concerned once I've left the car and they've taken the keys, they've accepted nothings wrong. I can't be responsible for someone throwing a rock at the car when it's sitting in your bay waiting to be checked

    • bobbified on 07/12/2017 - 09:37
      +1

      they told us they weren't concerned with anything smaller than a keycard bcos it was fair wear and tear.

      I remember Budget's paperwork said that anything less than 10mm is fair wear and tear… which is quite a bit smaller than a keycard.

    • JimmyF on 12/12/2017 - 09:44

      they weren't concerned with anything smaller than a keycard bcos it was fair wear and tear.

      As Bob said, read the hire contract, its 10mm (some are 5mm). Anything bigger than this is classed as DAMAGED.

      Key drop off was also just a box so no one checked the car when i returned it

      They'll still charge your credit card if damaged. Regardless of when its found.

      These hire car companies have found that they can rack in a couple of grand for little bits of damage they don't get fixed. Its pure profit to them.

      Do it say 5-7 times on a hire cars life and not get the damaged fixed and you're looking at $5-11k extra in excess fees. Its just pure cream to them.

  • PerthectDeal on 06/12/2017 - 23:48

    Yep never had a problem with hundreds of hire cars but I nearly had a holiday ruined as saw damage to the car that I didn't initially notice when collected the car as it was dark, this wasn't on the car condition report, 3 week holiday I was concerned but returned without problem.

    On another note, my friend's girlfriend hired him a Porsche Boxster for the day as a birthday present. He returned it and within a few days he got a credit card charge of $3000. He contacted them and they said there was stone chips on the bonnet and this was the excess. He tried fighting the case and the stone chips were so small he would not have picked them up anyway. He could not win the case. Later he read that some companies were doing this as a scam..

  • blahhhhh on 07/12/2017 - 08:37
    +1

    This is why I always buy excess reduction. For $10 a day it's worth the peace of mind and it means that I can simply drop the car off at the end and leave without checking every little scratch.

    • JimmyF on 12/12/2017 - 09:46

      excess reduction is not excess waiver. You're still paying!

  • Tamtim on 07/12/2017 - 08:39

    Do you guys pay extra for excess insurance or reduction when hiring a car? First time renting a car for a short trip in New Zealand

    • SlickMick on 07/12/2017 - 09:36

      Do you have a citibank credit-card with complimentary travel insurance? I just make sure I pay for flights with citibank, and they cover the excess.
      Unfortunately the domestic travel insurance requires a flight.

      • Qkumber on 08/12/2017 - 09:32

        I use a company like one cover which works out much much cheaper than paying the excess reduction through the hire companies. eg around $35 for 2 weeks for one person. Also covers other travel insurance as well.

        • lainey13 on 08/12/2017 - 18:30

          I'm just about to file a claim with 1cover to claim back 'damage liability fee' charged for replacement windscreen. I will report back if 1cover pay out or not.

  • Stevek1960 on 07/12/2017 - 08:40

    If you hire from them at Canberra airport they give you a key and send you on a marathon walk to collect your car. It is under cover, dark especially if it is early morning or at night so you have buckleys of seeing any damage (unless you use a torch) until you get it outside under better lighting or the next day. Then when returned back to them they dont inspect the car until their detailers go over it and give a condition report which can be up to 24 hours after return, damage can be done in the car park by anyone during that time so the moral of the story I guess is to make sure you take heaps of photos with date and time stamp switched on to cover your backside and wallet

  • SlickMick on 07/12/2017 - 09:37
    +1

    I've always hired the cheapest car I can find, which have invariably had lots of scratches etc. My experience is that they have only looked for "substantial" damage - to the point that I no longer take photos and don't really pay much attention to the report. I walk around with the inspector and perhaps point something out that he missed.
    I've never had an issue on return, and the inspections have been very brief.

    I suspect the situation might be different if they provide an immaculate new car, but I don't think the companies I deal with have new cars :)

    • try2bhelpful on 07/12/2017 - 11:07

      You would think it would be hard for a company with the title "RentaWreck" - to quibble about a couple of scratches :) My only concern with the lower end would be the reliability of the cars, if they are mechanically sound, and clean on the inside, I wouldn't have too many issues with renting a car that was a bit "dinged" up on the outside.

      I think the thrust of the article is about the major rental companies; which tend to be the substantially new car spectrum.

  • HeWhoKnows on 07/12/2017 - 13:18

    Good advice from OP

  • kiwiinoz on 07/12/2017 - 14:00
    +2

    I recently have had worst experience with Europcar at Melbourne airport….When I picked up the car they gave me a rental agreement for the times/days I wanted for…The guy on the counter advised all up I will be charged $207 right then and then $100 would be refunded when I drop off the car….so basically only $107 to which I agreed happily…I dropped the car 2 hours before the agreed time on rental agreement…no damage to car whatsoever…and then I got an invoice 4 days later for $160 charged to my credit card…It was last month and I am still fighting with them as to how they can charge me more than what they agreed on the rental agreement…they do not have any solid reason just keep beating around the bush….I wanted to share this just in case someone has had similar issues….

    • HighAndDry on 07/12/2017 - 17:49

      Did you confirm if the figures were in AUD or in NZD?

      • kiwiinoz on 07/12/2017 - 18:49
        +1

        Very smart question…but both were in AUD…

        • GaryQ on 08/12/2017 - 08:48

          Perhaps they charged you $35 a litre to fill the tank?

        • kiwiinoz on 08/12/2017 - 08:49

          @GaryQ: Nah I refueled it like 1 KM. before the drop off….Also they have not made that excuse yet….made lots of other excuses though….haha

    • Roney on 07/12/2017 - 17:57
      +1

      Thank you for sharing this nauseating experience with us ozbargainers. I also had a bad one with Europcar but it was eventually resolved but months later.

    • JimmyF on 12/12/2017 - 09:48

      If you google, Europcar at Melbourne airport you'll find they are a pack of theifs, pulling this scam on everyone it seems!

  • lainey13 on 08/12/2017 - 18:29
    +1

    Unfortunately I was in a Europcar rental in NZ recently and damn stupid truck drove past and kicked up a massive stone onto the windscreen. Took a chip out the size of my (small) fingernail. Did an incident report and they replaced the windscreen for $260. I thought it kinda sucked that it happened but I'm not disputing that they charged me… just wondering if I should have even voluntarily reported it in the first place… Oh well. Will try to claim on travel insurance.

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