Europcar Unfair "Administration Fee"

Vox_Populi_2

I recently hired a car for a work trip, and picked up two congestion charge penalties (picking up and dropping off the car in Central London). My fault, I know, although a friendly reminder from the Europcar man who saw me off wouldn't have gone amiss.

Anyway, the first I know of the fines is a photocopy of the two fines (£60) with an invoice attached from Europcar (in total, four bits of A4 paper received in the same DL envelope). The invoices include a £27.00 + VAT 'Administration Fee'.

The full amount (£182.10) has already been taken from my credit card.

To my mind this is precisely the same as the High Street Banks 'unfair' charges. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 applies. In short the law requires such 'fees' to be 'reasonable', ie: in a reasonable relationship with their costs. A profit is ok, maybe even 100%, but realistically it could only cost them a few pounds in administration costs to settle and then post out the photocopy.

I have written a letter quoting both the UTCCRs and the Supply of Goods Act (although this is less useful as I suspect the charge was detailed in the contract).

Two years ago I successfully reclaimed over £2000 in bank charges from HSBC (First Direct). They took it to the wire and sent a full settlement offer a day before the court case was due, but I was prepared for, and quite looking forward to, the case, so I feel prepared again to have my day in court.

I am slightly concerned about the amount involved however - from memory it cost me about £80 to initiate the claim process...and in this case I am only contesting £62.10 of the invoice amount. Guess I'll have to win to get all my costs back!

Any advice/experience welcome.

VP

dunstonh

To my mind this is precisely the same as the High Street Banks 'unfair' charges.

How have you managed to compare them?

n short the law requires such 'fees' to be 'reasonable', ie: in a reasonable relationship with their costs.

£27 plus VAT doesnt sound unreasonable.

Vox_Populi_2

[FONT=&quot]Because the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 specifcally prevents businesses from loading up ancillary charges to make extra profit out of customers. These regulations have been frequently used by people (including me) taking on the bank charges.

How does £27 to do a few moments paper work seem reasonable to you? In my case it's £54 as both invoices were raised at the same time and posted in teh same envelope. It costs £52 to rent a car from Europcar for a day, if their adminstration costs really are that high, they must make a fairly hefty loss (they don't).[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]

dunstonh

Because the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 specifcally prevents businesses from loading up ancillary charges to make extra profit out of customers.

That doesnt mean companies cannot charge for services. What you see as reasonable and what someone else consider reasonable are two different things.

[FONT="]How does £27 to do a few moments paper work seem reasonable to you?[/FONT]

The time taken plus the fact that in a number of cases they wont be able to recover those charges or have to continue to chase them and employ staff specifically to deal with these scenarios. Those staff have to be paid for, as does the location they work at and the employer benefits and they are allowed to make some profit from that charge. In which case £27 seems quite fair.

LeeSouthEast

Sounds quite fair to me. They had to read the two letters, spend 10 minutes finding out who had hired the car during that period, sort out billing you for the fines, send you a letter advising of the fact, pay the postage and material costs... etc. etc. £27 seems quite cheap really. Not to mention all this was probably laid out in the Terms and Conditions of Hire that you signed.

Vox_Populi_2

That doesnt mean companies cannot charge for services.

Acually it does. A solitctor whose core business is his time, and has laid out fees may charge for his services in this way, A car rental comapany that voluntarily chooses to pay your fine for you and then bill you £54 (not £27) is, I would argue, against the terms of the regulation. Regardless of whether the fees are laid out in the T & Cs.

The time taken plus the fact that in a number of cases they wont be able to recover those charges or have to continue to chase them and employ staff specifically to deal with these scenarios. Those staff have to be paid for, as does the location they work at and the employer benefits and they are allowed to make some profit from that charge. In which case £27 seems quite fair.

They hold your credit card and take the payment automatically - no chasing involved. I'll be sure to ask them in court if they have a team of people specifically to deal with this...I very much doubt it. As for whether £54 (not £27) is reasonable to charge me, I refer you to the retail cost of hiring a car for 24 hours - £52. There's more paperwork involved in hiring a car than there is raising two new invoices. So how does that fit into your idea of admin costs at Europcar?

Anyway, I'll let you know how I get on, win or lose.

Epic_panther

I take it you lost ha ha ha