Reply With Quote€1200 respray the bumper and the surrounding panels?
Went to Salzburg last week as the wife loves the sound of music etc.
Hired a car at Munich Airport via Alamo and whilst it was parked on a hotel car park some kind person caused the scratch as below.
I have car hire damage insurance so not to bothered but got the bill this morning and i nearly fell off my chair.
No wonder car hire companies have such a bad name.
So go on have a guess of how much in Euros to fix this parking scratch.
€1200 respray the bumper and the surrounding panels?
2,000 euros?
If, as it looks, it's just paint removed with no underlying bodywork distortion then it shouldn't have cost more than around €200 maximum. However, hire car companies are known for ripping off people for this sort of thing and you wouldn't have posted if it wasn't extortionate so I'll guess at €800.
750 euros
An arm and a leg.
Probably the whole deposit, around 1500 EUR?
Had something similar with an Europcar rent in Florence, they charged me 1300ceur. Was lucky however to have used a broker and their 100% coverage (Autoeurope), so first they had Europcar to reduce the cost to 700 eur (Europcar credited me with 600), and then the broker refunded me the 700 eur.
That's the only reason why I use brokers and their insurance, their contractual power with the rental companies is definitely higher than mine.
I would have been tempted to have a go at it with Tippex to avoid the hassle
I love a thinking man.Originally Posted by Onelasttime
I would have been tempted to have a go at it with Tippex to avoid the hassle
Spot on...my mate who owns a body shop said 250 to respray the whole bumper or 100 for a smart repair.
My car hire damage insurance company want a receipt and photographs from the repairing garage and Alamo said if you want that it will be 800 plus the 3 days car hire we lose while it is off the road so probably 1000 plus.
Left it with the insurance company and Alamo to argue the costs and glad i am not paying for it.
Spot repair would do the trick. It looks large but in fact, it's less than respraying a front bumper with stone chip damage; you have to prepare spots all over the bumper. At the workshop, we hire a local guy who's really good with this work. For something like that, he charges about 200 euros for repairing a front bumper. Perhaps a little more when it's a 'difficult' paint. This could be less, but my ball-park figure is 1200.
I took our 14 year old Panda to a local body repair place to ask for a quote to repair a dent in a rear door. They wanted to paint the whole side of the car at a price I could have bought a better car for.
You have the have deposit insurance on top of collision weaver now, it’s a big con. In the UK most of the hire companies sell you AXA CDW insurance, whenever I have picked up a car the desk say they don’t recognise it and either want a large deposit or take their insurance. it’s all a big con.u
Well they request to hold an amount against your credit card. It doesn’t get debited unless there is damage.
I rent cars all the time and have no issue with this as I have Car hire excess insurance and would never pay their usual £6 per day rip charges for the same type of insurance.
The thing that annoys me is the charge for booster seats when you have forgotten yours or it is impractical to travel with one. They charge you £5/per day for a seat that’s costs no more than £20! Grrrr!
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What countries do you hire cars in?
Car hire industry is long due a clean up. Just some of my "experiences":
- Zero damage to the car, but no-one around to inspect the car with me on return. 2 weeks later they charge for damage. Luckily I had timestamped photos and they gave in, but they could have persued that one.
- £5-£8/day charge for baby/child seats.
- InterRent in Spain. Recovery and replacement of car in the event of an accident is not covered under the agreement, soi if you have an accident you have to pay for the recovery truck and you don;t get a relacement car for the remainder of your hire without paying for a new one, if they have one, and can pay the consequently inflated hire charge.... Unless of course you take their insurance in which case none of these conditions apply.
- Full to Empty fuel policy, regardless of hire period. Pay for the tank on hire, thus even if you drive for one day and 10miles, you've paid for an almost complete tank of fuel.
- Hire period completed, then 8 weeks later get a speeding ticket from France (for a car we hired in Menorca!). They'd informed the French authorities of the wrong driver when they got the ticket - took 8 weeks and countless emails/phone calls to sort out and get them to admit they'd made a mistake.
I will say that some companies have been great. OwnersCars in Menorca was a joy to work with - Full to full fuel policy, very minor damage ignored, very helpful and got a free upgraded car delivered to us when another car ran up the back of us. Easy to work with on a seperate occasion when I dinged the car on a bollard (they did charge 50 Euro for the office paperwork involved in the insurance handing on this one as I had my own car hire insurance policy).
UK, Germany, Spain, Portugal just recently.
From major dealers such as Eurocar to online brokers such Rentalcars and even via Ryan air!
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A local hire company told me that the fuel gauge was faulty and only went up to 3/4. Like a mug I took him at his word. Of course when I filled it up in the week the gauge went to full, so he had stiffed me for a quarter of a tank of fuel. You would think that their reputation would be worth more that that.
As a 'youth' I did this with a px. Needn't have bothered, they didn't even look at the car.I would have been tempted to have a go at it with Tippex to avoid the hassle
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It’s a £200 max job but hire car insurance will rip the Ar5e out of the final repair price, so £1000ish
And what will probably happen is the car hire company will either pay for a €200 fix try recover €1000 from the customer,or the garage will do a €50 tcut fix (which is what I'd do on my car) and charge the car hire company €250+ or €1000.Whichever of the above the customer wouldn't know how it was repaired otherthan told the most expensive.
Like in a lot of things,try sort it yourself as you tend not to rob yourself.
In a lot of cases the car won’t be repaired until there are a few to sort out simply as a car off the road won’t be earning any money so the costs will be their “standard” charge.
In Spain the other year, I badly kerbed a front wheel in a hire car. Destroyed the tire and made a big mess of the alloy. I lubed myself up expecting a proper shafting, and the bill came to £160 all in. Reading the replies here, it seems that I dodged a bullet.
Name them, please.
Decades ago direct line set up their own repair centres to stop themselves being shafted by cowboy repairers. I'm surprised the bigger car hire companies haven't done something similar.
It's such a rip off.
This is why I always buy additional CDW insurance in the UK before I travel, it usually works out at around £15 for a single trip as opposed to the £25/day the hire company charges. Or for around £55 you get year round multi trip insurance. You'd still need to pay for the initial damage or loss of deposit, but this policy lets you claim it back. I have always used iCarhireinsurance.com
I feel for you.
This has been a thing (sort of) in the Channel Islands for years. We went to Jersey for a long weekend and rented a car. On arrival (not before) we were told we had to pay for the half a tank of fuel that was in the car and to bring it back empty. Really? Half a tank of fuel in 3 days, on an island 9 miles by 5 miles, with a blanket 40MPH limit? (In a diesel Fiesta, at that).
Unfortunately, the hire car company didn't take into account what a twat I can be if I think I'm being ripped off.
We must have covered every mile of road on the island during our stay (some more than once) and I did them all without going higher than second gear. Going back to the airport, the fuel light came on. Sweet.
Cheers,
Plug
I took a hired Luton van under a very low bridge once, took the back clean off (well maybe not clean, more of a mangled mess). Rang the hire company and told them I’d had a accident and that the van had been towed to a near by town. They told me i’d Have to pay the £50.00 excess (this was 15 years ago). I was happy with that as I’d been driving all day and used a full tank of fuel, so it was cheaper than filling it up. The next day once their guy had looked at the van they rang and said I would be hearing from their solicitor, never did and they never took the £50.00 I considered myself very lucky.
On the other hand... landing in Orlando on Christmas day can give us a nice surprise. I'd rented a car from Alamo before we set off for the trip. I asked the guy behind the counter for the biggest car possible in the price range I'd selected. His answer: "It is Christmas, go to the parking and choose any car you want. Just take what you like. No extra charge!"
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