Car Hire and Damage Waiver Crisis!

rose28454

Hi
Oh dear! After I went to work this morning my husband( who is still off sick with depression) called me to say that we had a county court summons from Enterprise for £6438.00 for the incident in June. Does anyone know what happens if you dispute a County Court claim? I am off to CAB tommorow to ask for help and maybe to see a solicitor aswell. I have also found the number of the BVRLA (who are the trade association for the Car Rental Industry) and they have sent me a form to fill in and they will investigate.
Has anyone any ideas how this will all end up. Thanks

Astaroth

Personally, as per my previous post, you really needed to read your paper work and deal with the matter rather than hopping it would go away.

County court is a civil court and so works on the balance of probability rather than beyond reasonable doubt. The court will also be a relatively small room with a large table. Judge at one end and each side down one side of the table.

Given the value of the claim it will almost certainly be allocated to the fast track (rather than small track - aka small claims court). The main thing this will mean for you is that if you contest the claim but the judge rules in favour of the claimant you will have to pay their claim and also their barrister/ legal fees on top of the money already listed.

I would suggest that you now quickly take advice from a solicitor and bring all your copies of correspondence and most importantly the contract with you.

dauphin

I agree with Astaroth, you really need to get a solicitor to look in detail at the paperwork.
I suspect that he/she may find that the hire car insurance/damage waiver excludes overhead damage or damage to the underside of the vehicle. I believe this is pretty common with such insurance.
Try to recollect as precisely as possible what the agent said to you about damage waiver and discuss with you solicitor whether you can make a case that the waiver was miss-sold to you if you were told that it would cover you against "any" damage.

deanos

Blimey what a story, good luck.

Bossyboots

dauphin wrote:

I agree with Astaroth, you really need to get a solicitor to look in detail at the paperwork.
I suspect that he/she may find that the hire car insurance/damage waiver excludes overhead damage or damage to the underside of the vehicle. I believe this is pretty common with such insurance.
Try to recollect as precisely as possible what the agent said to you about damage waiver and discuss with you solicitor whether you can make a case that the waiver was miss-sold to you if you were told that it would cover you against "any" damage.

You have just set off an alarm bell in my head from when we rented a car last year. I am thinking that I read damage by car park barriers or bollards was not included in the insurance cover unless such damage was caused by negligence on the part of the car park owner. I bet I can't get my hands on that again as it was done through work and I can't find anything on the Enterprise site about their insurance conditions but I think you may well have hit the nail on the head.

tipsychick

I would third what Dauphin and Bossyboots have said.

I was loathe to post before but when I hired a car last year, it didn't cover damage to the undercarriage of the vehicle or to the roof.

I found this out the hard way too. A car came straight towards me on country lane and I was forced to take avoiding action, ending up on the brink of going into a deep ditch. There was an horrific scraping noise at the time and some kind of liquid seemed to be leaking when I checked the underneath of the car but it might just have been the aircon. Fortunately the car seemed to drive okay the next day and I dropped it off without any problems but I was surprised to discover that I wouldn't have been covered. It will be in one of the many, many clauses on the back of the insurance policy printout.

I think I've also heard of case where a car was parked up and something was thrown from a height off a bridge or block of flats, which flattened the roof of the vehicle and the driver wasn't covered.

Definitely do as Astaroth and others have said and get along to the CAB or a solicitor with the original contract.

Edited to add:

I've dug out my contract. It was for car hire in Mallorca via a Spanish agent of Holiday Autos.

It states, "CDW Exemption: Whatsoever damage caused to the top part of the vehicle, usually resulting from negligence or tactical carelessness by the Leasee. Whatsoever damage to the bottom or underside of the vehicle (effecting the mechanical parts), usually resulting from negligent driving, usually on inappropriate roads. Damage to tyres and damage caused by excess load are not covered... Any damage done to the key... Any charges made due to placing incorrect fuel in the tank..."

Nothing specifically about bollards but this was for car hire in Spain and maybe they don't have stupid, dangerous bollards shooting up out of the ground!

tipsychick

I couldn't agree with you more ts_aly2000. I hate getting shafted by the small print!

There have been a couple of interesting articles in The Times covering these types of issues:

http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18409-2166250.html

Fortunately, I'd taken out the type of policy that they talk about:

http://insurance4carhire.com

It's particularly good if you hire cars regularly. Not much help to the OP though.

MarkyMarkD

It is not unusual for hire car insurance to exclude damage caused by the driver's negligence.

They are not seeking to exclude common or garden accidents.

But driving over a bollard because you don't read signs properly isn't a common or garden accident, it's negligence, the same way as it would be negligent to drive a hire car through a field or through a river which it clearly isn't designed to do.

I am not at all surprised that ERAC are pursuing this claim, and I wouldn't assume that they are "trying it on" at all.

You need to get a solicitor - you may have free legal protection cover on your household insurance.

dauphin

ts_aly2000 wrote:

Not really worth hiring a hire car then is it. If you're only insured from the sides?

Must be a nightmare if you run someone over and they go under the car.

This is the most ridiculous example of restrictive car insurance yet.

Does this actually *meet* the requirements of vehicle insurance in this country?? As I don't think it does.

There is, of course, full cover for third party liability. It's only damage to the hire vehicle itself which may be excluded. I suppose the exclusion is primarily intended to penalise hirers who take the vehicle off-road or are careless enough to drive under a bridge which is too low.

Astaroth

The legal requirement for insurance is only to cover third party liability when on a public highway - unlimited cover for personal injury but limited cover for property damage. So even if you get Third Party Only insurance you have greater cover than you are legally required to have.