Scratched Rental Car?

toad

I am on my holidays at the moment and I rented a car. Last night someone keyed the rental car accross the bonnet from the center to the right front light, its a white non metalic paint car. As the excess on my insurance is 1000, I am wondering what should i do? Should I try and have it fixed before I drop it back? Also what is the average cost of fixing a scratch so I have sone idea so the renatl company doesn try to extort me. Thanks for any help or suggestions!

BobTheBeat

I would have thought all of that is covered under the fee you paid to rent the car in the first place... Im sure there is some allowance for this under the terms of contract with the rental company? Give their head office a shout, without disclosing your rental with them and see what they say.. Best of luck and enjoy the holiday!

Our man in Havana

1000 excess? Are you mad? What part of the world are you in? If the excess is 1000 then they will make yu pay for the scratch.

You should have been able to reduce the excess to zero by paying a few extra bucks.

lomb

U will lose 1000, u think thats bad i hired a car off a dodgy outfit in france and the excess was more than the car was worth 2500 euro! and they authorised my card for that.

thank god nothing happened to it. My advice is find a chips repair service it may be fixable but i doubt it, the cost to respray one panel only is about 6-700 euro commercially, but i reakon theyl charge u the full grand for it.good luck with it anyway.

toad

This is not good news at all. It´s actually not a dodgy company, its budget car rental www.budget.com and I paid for ALL the extra insurances. I can´t see how they can justify making me foot the bill for a respray as the car already had significant scratches (which were noted on the contract).
I just looked at it again and its not that bad, I am going polish it and see how it looks then, and get a quote for how much to repair it.

Our man in Havana

If you got all the extra insurnaces, why is there a 1000 excess? What country are you in toad?

toad

Bond-007 wrote:

If you got all the extra insurnaces, why is there a 1000 excess? What country are you in toad?

mexico

quarryman

*gulp*

*nervous laugh*

mike65

You should have just bought a banger when you landed!

Mike.

Our man in Havana

mike65 wrote:

You should have just bought a banger when you landed!

Mike.

They are still making the old beetles in Mexico and they are 10 a penny over there. You should be able to pick one up for 100 of your US dollars:D

halkar

I have hired cars abroad many times and had scratches and a fairly large dent once but never paid single penny. They never charged on my credit card either, they usually come out and check around and that's it. It should be covered with your collision waver or whatever they call it. Noy sure about the excess but 1000 sounds very high.

kermit_ie

If you have full insurance, you will not be charged anything. The excess is if the car is stolen.

Victor

mike65 wrote:

You should have just bought a banger when you landed!

How do you think he landed? :d

ubu

kermit_ie wrote:

If you have full insurance, you will not be charged anything. The excess is if the car is stolen.

If you have full insurance your excess would be zero, the excess is for any damage caused to the car.

kermit_ie

On picking up the car a deposit in the form of a credit card has to be placed (in case the car is returned with less petrol or the rental period has been extended). Cash-deposits are not accepted. Please contact the Reservation Center for details.

From the T&Cs of a fully insured car. The value of the deposit will depend on the value of the car. For example, a convertible is 1250 with Sixt in France...

Our man in Havana

In the USA if you get CDW and Supplmentary liability insurance the excess is normally zero. I have always asked what the "deductable" ie excess is and they usually laugh. "Just bring back the key" is the usual thing, in that the full value of the car is covered.

Stephen

Off topic, but anyways:

Volkswagen finally stopped making the old beetles in Mexico back in 2003.

Our man in Havana

Stephen wrote:

Off topic, but anyways:

Volkswagen finally stopped making the old beetles in Mexico back in 2003.

Should still be shed loads of them knocking around.

Stephen

True... apparently 70,000 mexico city taxis are beetles.

toad

I dropped the car back yesterday, no problems. I didn´t pay a penny, thank God.

And yes the old style beetle is the most common car on the road here, second is the nissan tsuru.