Does this damage quote look accurate?

Nasher · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:28

Jamesyboyjim said:
Ouch, nasty! Should have handed it back then argued it was damaged after you returned it!

My old man damaged a hire car, he scraped the side of it, bought a can of spray paint and painted the scrapes, of course it looked terrible up close but he got away with it, somehow! I just hope no one innocent gets stung by his sneaky cover up!

lol, far from the worst thing people do to hire cars. People just don't give a crap about them. My old boss put one on it's roof doing J-turns in the office car park.

I wouldn't touch an ex-hire car with a barge pole while buying used cars. Pretty much all of them will have been ragged to death from day one. Same with many company cars.

Vince · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:31

Actually seems reasonable to me, I hit an A6 from behind a few years ago and told the fella I would pay it if he gave me a quote, ended up a bit more than 3k out of pocket for a little scratch. Audi replaced all the mountings, bumper, reversing sensors etc... Still to this day I think I should have just let it go to insurance.

shiver · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:46

Sirrel Squirrel said:
Isn't there normally an excess with these things anyway. When I've hired cars the excess is normally £400-500 with the option to pay extra to have it reduced?

Standard excess is £1500 for this company.

Pay a bit more per day to reduce, a bit more for £0.

I've just settled the damage after managing to get the end cost down to £800.

tom_e · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:52

That's not so bad in the end although for next time you can get excess insurance from a third party for basically pennies rather than paying the hire companies 0 excess fees.

Jamesyboyjim · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:57

paradigm said:
" a big faceless corporation"

That's exactly the reason it doesn't matter.

shiver · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:58

tom_e said:
That's not so bad in the end although for next time you can get excess insurance from a third party for basically pennies rather than paying the hire companies 0 excess fees.

You can, do you have an example company? Is it like travel insurance cover?

With all this, I have thought many times I could just buy my own cheapish secondhand car and worry less about it but over the time period, and living in central London, the cost would be a lot higher for something I don't need.

tom_e · 6 Sep 2016 at 14:59

shiver said:
You can, do you have an example company? Is it like travel insurance cover?

Pretty much.

http://www.confused.com/car-hire-excess-insurance

Prophet · 6 Sep 2016 at 15:47

I use these guys.

https://www.questor-insurance.co.uk/

Excess insurance is £50 for a year, worldwide or you can pay around £2.50 per day in Europe.

joeyjojo · 6 Sep 2016 at 15:53

Never, ever, get the excess waiver from the hire company, it's a massive rip-off.

The cheapest rate (the policies I go for) tends to be about £1.50 per day in my experience for several thousand £ worth of excess insurance.

I use https://www.moneymaxim.co.uk/comparisons/car-hire-insurance (as recommended by MSE) to compare.

Pre-empting Fox: for anything but bog-standard cars read the small print closely.

asim18 · 6 Sep 2016 at 17:38

paradigm said:
Why?

For the same reason that if someone scraped down the side of your car, painted over it with dulux, then walked off without telling you.

Just because the car is owned by " a big faceless corporation" doesn't give you the right to treat it like dirt and then try to (pathetically) cover up the evidence.

Lmao. No. Your "same" reason is not the same, not even comparible. And you clearly haven't worked at a rental chain and have absolutely no idea how it works

How is someone scraping my paint then painting over it got anthing to do with a company not bothering about some damage to their disposable car?

Cars when returned are checked for visible damage. If you have supercover they dont even bother looking for damage.

asim18 · 6 Sep 2016 at 17:48

joeyjojo said:
Never, ever, get the excess waiver from the hire company, it's a massive rip-off.

Getting an excess waiver from the place of rental is not purely for reducing your excess, its to ensure a quibble and headache free rental even if you hit something. If you dont have supercover from the rental place and you damage the car they will not give you any special treatment and they'll most likely automatically charge your credit card as per their t&c for not having supercover, which you will then have to reclaim yourself. If you get the cover from the rental place itself it's a completely quibble free process, we were told to not even look at cars which had supercover.

muon · 6 Sep 2016 at 20:01

By the way it doesn't look like this is the quote they are using to actually repair the car.

This looks like some system designed to estimate the cost of repairs. Why are they using Thatcham data to estimate costs.

Ask them for a quote from a real garage.

Price looks about right though.

Scania · 7 Sep 2016 at 01:32

I'd have photocopied the invoice, highlighted the bit that said "CUSTOMER RESPONSIBILITY TOTAL 0.00" put a little note of thanks for the great customer service and left it at that.

joeyjojo · 7 Sep 2016 at 09:55

asim18 said:
Getting an excess waiver from the place of rental is not purely for reducing your excess, its to ensure a quibble and headache free rental even if you hit something.

True, up to you if that's worth £20-25 a day.

I'd rather pay £1.50 a day and deal with the paperwork in the unlikely event of an accident.

Finglonga · 7 Sep 2016 at 10:34

muon said:
By the way it doesn't look like this is the quote they are using to actually repair the car.

This looks like some system designed to estimate the cost of repairs. Why are they using Thatcham data to estimate costs.

Ask them for a quote from a real garage.

Price looks about right though.

There are two quote systems, one for the customer and a completely separate one if it is for a insurance quote.

[TW]Fox · 7 Sep 2016 at 12:31

Nasher said:
I wouldn't touch an ex-hire car with a barge pole while buying used cars. Pretty much all of them will have been ragged to death from day one. Same with many company cars.

Chances are you'd never know - many of them are registered by the manufacturer and end up sold as Manufacturer Approved cars after x months or x miles.

You can often spot hire company barcodes or 'When this vehicle reaches X miles please text XXXX' sticker son the speedo on some of the manufacturers websites.

[TW]Fox · 7 Sep 2016 at 12:32

asim18 said:
Getting an excess waiver from the place of rental is not purely for reducing your excess, its to ensure a quibble and headache free rental even if you hit something. If you dont have supercover from the rental place and you damage the car they will not give you any special treatment and they'll most likely automatically charge your credit card as per their t&c for not having supercover, which you will then have to reclaim yourself. If you get the cover from the rental place itself it's a completely quibble free process, we were told to not even look at cars which had supercover.

So your credit card gets billed, you fill a form in, your excess cover pays out. There is no reason to buy this insurance from the rental firm, they charge through the nose for it.