Urgent help - car hire damage (UK)

richy4 · 20 April 2017 at 10:22PM

I hired out a car with easirent just for 2 days locally in UK as I do not have my own car.

Whilst I was out shopping today, I returned to the car (Fiat 500x) and it has its rear right hand side bumper on the corner dented in.

I have no idea where or how the damage occurred and I'm fairly confident I didn't do it myself!!

Absolutely livid and obviously very worried about what the car hire company will do/say?

I return the car tomorrow night, I have got a £1250 excess with easirent however I did purchase car excess insurance from Leisure Guard, as advised on MSE website.

Has anyone got any experience on how to handle this??

Should I inform the car rental ASAP to report it? Or just wait till I return it to see what they say? Similarly, when should I make the claim for the excess amount?

Am I right in thinking that the £1250 excess will be totally covered by my Leisure Guard policy?

rich13348 · 20 April 2017 at 10:27PM

Report the incident to hire company asap. You will be responsible for excess until you claim from the insurance company, who you should also notify. Your terms and conditions will tell you for how much you can claim. And here they are
You claim up to £6000 so your £1250 should covered. Also it tells you what you need to make a claim and who to make that claim to. As I said above you will have to pay the £1250 first if the hire company want that while amount

AndyMc..... · 20 April 2017 at 10:32PM

All here. https://leisureguard.insureforcars.com/docs/Policy_Wording.pdf

richy4 · 20 April 2017 at 10:40PM

I'm going to take it over to the hire company tomorrow to show them in person/report it.

On the 'condition report' form I was given, the 'damage policy' says a dent is anything 'up to excess value'. I estimate the damage to be about £200-500 tops. It is literally a squashed in bumper (plastic) and a few scratches to the plastic!

So how does this work, they charge the excess (all or in part) to my credit card, then I eventually get it all reimbursed by the insurance I took out?

I can imagine this is going to be a very lengthy process! Almost tempted to find a garage and spend all day tomorrow repairing it myself!!!

debtdebt · 20 April 2017 at 10:56PM

Given that you have insured the excess through a different company, you'll be charged the excess on your credit card and will have to claim this back from the insurance company. Maybe with hindsight, it would have been easier to pay the Collision Damage Waiver with the hire company which will mean you won't have to pay anything

Where do you get the £200-£500 estimate from? If the bumper has been squashed in, it may be beyond repair and will require a new bumper to be sprayed and fitted. Plus the loss of income whilst the car is off the road for repairs.

shaun_from_Africa · 20 April 2017 at 11:10PM

debtdebt wrote: »

Maybe with hindsight, it would have been easier to pay the Collision Damage Waiver with the hire company which will mean you won't have to pay anything

They wouldn't have to pay anything apart from the extortionate damage waiver fees charged by the car hire company.

I've just done a dummy booking for the same type of car that the OP booked and I could get this for two days for a total of £13.09.
If I opted for their "Zero excess rate", the price goes up to £57.09 which means that you are paying £44 for two days excess cover.
When you consider that you can a one year multi hire excess policy (UK only) for £39.25 or a two day policy for £6.85 from Leisure guard I would say that provided you have the funds available in the bank or on a card to cover the excess until the insurance pays out, getting a policy from an independent company make sound financial sense.

debtdebt · 21 April 2017 at 2:05AM

Have you seen the Terms and Conditions of the Leisure Guard scheme? One of them is that you have to include as part of your claim you have to present them with the final repair invoice from the repairing garage detailing the breakdown of parts and labour expended on the repair. Given that most hire companies don't even bother repairing the damage, you're facing an uphill struggle already.

Personally, I'd always pay the CDW with the hire company to save on any hassle.

richy4 · 21 April 2017 at 3:27AM

Well that's fine if that's your preferred method. It's not something recommended by this website.

I would have thought if the insurance company find problems with easirent with obtaining the final repair bill then that's between them and easirent. Has anyone else had real proper experience of claiming on a car rental excess policy?

marlot · 21 April 2017 at 5:19AM

richy4 wrote: »

...I estimate the damage to be about £200-500 tops...

You may be in for a shock!

Ganga · 21 April 2017 at 9:01AM

If the damage occurd in a car park or supermarket car park they might have cctv which may show you who damaged your car,if so you can always claim of them and report them for not reporting an accident/collision

richy4 · 22 April 2017 at 10:57AM

Car returned yesterday, as expected, got charged nearly all of the original excess.

Easirent provided me with copy of damage report, receipt of amount I have had to pay and said they will 'be in touch'. Not sure why, I have everything I need except the final repair invoice which might be tricky depending on how long it takes them to actually do it and then provide the proof.

Luckily (ironically!) they were quite miffed about how 'badly' it was damaged and said they'd take it out of service immediately for repair. Hopefully that will expedite the process a little, rather than some minor scratch which they'd probably never repair for months and months :cool:

Urgent help - car hire damage (UK)

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