Looking for a bit of advice and/or experience.
We’ve had a lease car for three years and have been hit with near enough £1000 bill. We had a couple of dents repaired by an authorised body shop through the insurance company which they have deemed poor and a couple of stone chips to a couple of driver panels. I did take a load of pictures. We had the vehicle valeted inside and cleaned. There are a couple of minor scratches on two of the black bumper panels £ 75 each one!
Any one had any disputes and or/tips for dealing with this issue and arguing wear and tear?
I’ve always found it useful in such situations to ask “What would James Bond do?” The answer is crystalline. Find the directors home address, have earth shattering sex with his wife, tear down his empire and kill him.
Always, always get all damage looked at before handing it back, as they massively over charge.
My last lease vehicle was always repaired at the makes (BMW) body shop, as I had trouble with the Merc I had before where the front was re-sprayed at the insurance companies favoured wank bodyshop in Manchester.
A bit late, but worth remembering.
Insurance compaies are b’stards and just go for cheap in repairs, not to be confused with to spec. Now if the insurance company insists on using ‘their repairer’ I say to them I will be taking the car afterwards to the makers bodyshop to report on the quality of the repair, amazingly they sometimes change their mind on the repairer. Fucking bastards they are.
I had a new car on hire last week with only a couple of hundred kms on the clock. It was left hand drive (wasn’t on holiday or anything, just fancied trying a LHD car for a week )
When we picked it up, the hire car lady walked around the entire car twice pointing out that the car was new with no dents or scratches and no damage to any of the wheels. Half an hour later, when we were going through a little village with narrow streets, I misjudged the distance on the nearside and gave both wheels a hefty scrape along the kerb.
When I returned it yesterday, I was expecting a bill for the damage to the wheels but the guy just walked around the car, said nothing about the wheels and gave me a receipt with “sin danos” written in the damage section. Phew, that was a bit of luck I thought!
They can still charge you Jim. It’s in the small print on all rental agreements. If damage is noticed after return then a claim can still be made. You can argue that it was OK when you returned it but they can still take legal action.
The clause is there to protect the company from people who take the vehicles off road and damage the underside which isn’t visible on return.
Hmmmm. Don’t like the sound of that Terry, but the car hire depot had loads of kerbs and the car was immediately put into a queue for the car wash. It would presumably be driven and parked after that so It should be pretty easy to argue that the wheel damage occurred later.
I shall be checking my account with trepidation for the return of the 600 euro deposit…
Lease companies are feckers. They do this all the time with our company cars. They seldom get the work done, as minor dings and scratches have little impact on auction prices. They inspect the cars, take them to auction the very same day and then put in a bill for “damage” that was never fixed. Just another way to make money.
Mate of mine put a hire car into a ditch and almost rolled it over, while I laughed myself silly from the car behind. Scratched to buggery one one side. When he took it back, the guy wailed and gnashed his teeth, checked the fuel level, when it was full he waved us on. That insurance was worth it
Our PCP’d leaf was handed back with a couple of bigger than mandated door dings, a cracked fog light and a nasty scrape on the sill where the wife misjudged a turn in a multi story car park and hit the raised curb on a down ramp. Also had aprox 2k excess mileage, we were shitting bricks. Total bill was under £400, so it wasn’t too bad.