Car Hire and Damage Waiver Crisis!

Bossyboots

shitefourbrains wrote:

Altarf you're saving me a job diggin out all that.

Wording on any contract is mind boggling. When you hire cars from enterprise on a Retail basis here's what insurance you have in a nutshell.

Third Party insurance only.

Enterprise only have third party covered by Chubb. The vehicles themselves are not actually insured. (not fully comp)

On a retail ticket..
By signing the Damage waiver it is an agreement that Enterprise can only chase you up to the value of £500.

By signing the Excess Protectionit is an agreement that Enterprise will not charge you the £500 excess.

Basically if you didn't Sign DW you would be responsible for the entire cost of the vehicle... This is usually only ever the case when insurance customers use enterprises cars as courtesy cars and use their own insurance to cover the vehicle instead of paying for enterprise cover. Or if corporate accounts have companies own insurance.

Thats the nutshell version but obviously any small print in the contract overules what I just said!

Thats a good explanation thanks.

What you have reminded me of is how these things are worded. We scouted around for a while looking to hire a car and the approaches were quite different. We would ask for a quote for the vehicle and "everything we needed to ensure there was no more cost to us if the driver crashed it". We soon learnt that many places were economical in their help in this regard, some only mentioning damage waiver and nothing about excess waiver. Once we got to grips with the jargon, we made sure we asked for both but it is bamboozling and I made my boss check specifically when he collected the car that he had cover for both of these.

Altarf

shitefourbrains wrote:

If you paid for excess protection it will protect you from paying the £500 excess so long as the damage was not done on purpose or through drivers negligence. The examples we often give is "putting the wrong fuel in the tank".

It is going to be up to enterprises solicitors to argue that your husband was neglegent.

I think that the difficulty for Enterprise's solicitors is that the contract defines the negligent circumstances that override the DW and EP, such as putting fuel in. Not knowing a rising bollard exists and driving over it is not one of them.

As I said before, I cannot see how not knowing a rising bollard exists and driving over it is any more negligent than misjudging an overtaking manoeuvre and writing the car off. In the latter case no way would Enterprise (or any other company) dream of trying to wriggle out of paying.

real1314

hmmm, rising bollard or fixed bollard?

if you hit a fixed bollard, that's surely more negligent than hitting a rising bollard? You can see the fixed one all the time, but not the rising one.
in fact if you hit a lorry, that's even worse, it's a damn sight bigger than a bollard, rising or not. Hardly grounds to refuse the insurance.

So I think the "negligence" argument fails enterprise.

As for "illegal purpose", I think the magistrate (judge?) will laugh this sort of claim right out of court.
Only the courts themselves can define a particular act as illegal, and as others have said, would this negate a vehicle parked without a ticket on a "pay and display" or one being driven too fast? Or what if you were playing a copied tape whilst drving it?
Besides which, the congestion scheme is probably run by the council, and therefore it wouldn't be illegal to evade payment, it would be a civil matter between the driver and the council.

rose28454

Hi
Thanks for everybodies advice. I will contact the CAB and a solicitor this week and hopefully it will be sorted. I have my copy of the contract and we took damage waiver and initialled for it.
Thanks again and I will keep you posted

rose28454

I have today heard from Tesco Credit Card that they are refunding the £500.00 excess payment that Enterprise took from my account. I think this will strengthen my case. I am now waiting to hear back from my solicitor about the next move.

Ambre_Solaire

Thats brilliant news, have been following your story, may the force be with you !

Take care

deanos

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/video/view_broadband/519.html

Looks painful, is this what happened ?

real1314

deanos wrote:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/video/view_broadband/519.html

Looks painful, is this what happened ?

That was funny! (sorry OP)
I have to say that despite my previous comments, maybe the car hire co. are seeing this as you trying the "tailgating" trick as referred to in the video clip?

If they are, and they can make a case, then you might have a problem.
I think it will come down to the signs that were displayed.
Your hubby didn't "park" so he didn't think he needed a ticket, but how would the sensor know that anyone HAD parked? Presumably there were signs about the bollards? And warnings about tailgating?

Having seen the video, I think you might have a problem.

ChrissieI

I work for a vehicle rental company. Our company policy is that overhead damage and under the vehicle damage are not covered by our insurance.

I handle the insurance claims,if you had rented a vehicle from us the best way you could get out of this is by proving that the bollard was not visable.
We have these bollards in our town they have a warning sign before them then when you get closer there are lights. A red light when the bollard is up and a green one when the bollard is down and safe to cross. If the vehicle infront has gone over the bollard you have to wait for it to rise again. As the bollard will rise between each vehicle. To stop people leaving without paying.

If these signs are there then you are likely to be proved negligent, as you would be if you ignored any road sign. But if you can prove there are no warnings (maybe by taking pictures of the area) then you will have a strong case.
Good luck with this.

Altarf

ChrissieI wrote:

If these signs are there then you are likely to be proved negligent, as you would be if you ignored any road sign.

Negligence is irrelevant unless that specific act of negligence is covered in the contract. In any accident where it is your fault you have been negligent, yet the insurance company doesn't say - "sorry not paying out as it was your fault" as that is the whole point of insurance.

If the company could prove it was a deliberate act rather than negligence, that may be a different case.