Car hire company (falsely) alleging damage. Help!

Gary_Coughlan

laurz121 wrote: »

Gary do you think this is an acceptable way to conduct business? To accuse customers of causing damage without FIRST checking the facts? I think that is an appalling way to treat a customer and reflects very badly on your company.

You admit that your company failed to check for damage before renting the vehicle out and that you have wrongly blamed an innocent customer for causing damage which of course they did not do and yet you still do not admit that your company was wrong to obtain a statement to clarify whether the customer was to blame. Of course the customer should not have to defend himself against such outrageous false allegations yet you still maintain that it is correct for him to have to do so.

I notice that in your post you fail to admit that there has been any operational errors made by sixt and furthermore you fail to say that anything will change in the future. What are you going to do to ensure that more customers are not wrongly blamed for your staffs mess ups? What procedures will you be putting in place to ensure that your innocent customers don't have to give statements needlessly defending themselves because of your staffs stuff ups?

How many other customers have been wrongly blamed for causing damage to your vehicles? My guess is this isn't the first.

Sorry, I do not have the details of this specific case and therefore answered from a generic perspective.

The branches have very clear procedures concerning pre and post rental inspections but we are only human and humans make mistakes. The customer's experience suggest that our own procedure was not followed and of course I believe what the customer says. My intended handling on obtaining the information was to raise this with the Branch Manager for the location concerned. It is of course not acceptable to accuse customer's of damages that they were not responsible for. The damage department had a report of new damage during this hire and therefore contacted the customer. This is to be expected in cases of new damage. It seems that on this occasion we made a mistake I recognise that we caused this customer unnecessary stress.

The reality is that mistakes happen, no mistake is intentional we have no procedures to make mistakes. That's why we have a customer service, that's why I am here to help and to give the feedback to the damage team and the operations team.

I hope the customer contacts me directly so I can personally apologise, my e-mail address is gary.coughlan[at]sixt.com I can be reached by telephone 00 44 1246 506220.

We consider excellence in customer service to be our highest priority and actively seek out customer complaints and are happy to answer them openly on forums and engage in an honest conversation.

Best regards
Gary

ray123

Gary Coughlan, my name is Angela. I sent you a number of e-mails on Monday 16 August and am yet to receive a reply.

I have had a terrible experience with sixt.

Gary_Coughlan

ray123 wrote: »

Gary Coughlan, my name is Angela. I sent you a number of e-mails on Monday 16 August and am yet to receive a reply.

I have had a terrible experience with sixt.

Hi Angela,

I am sorry to hear that you had a bad experience, I would of course like to look into this for you. I have no record of an e-mail on the 16th of August. Did you send it direct to me, the e-mail address I used on this forum included box brackets to avoid spam e-mails.

The e-mail address is @sixt not [@]sixt

Best regards
Gary

datostar

I once rented a car from Sixt at Nuremburg Airport and took it into the Czech Republic where I got a puncture and had to use the spare wheel. On returning the car I told them about this and was thanked for doing so. I was told that if the tyre had to be replaced I might be charged for it. I never heard any more about it. I do wonder if the outcome would have been the same if I hadn't told them.

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

I've hired many cars on the continent and I don't recall the last time anyone ever checked the vehicle's condition with me. More often than not the keys are returned through a letterbox in the (closed) hire desk.

Its different in the UK, but certainly in Europe nobody checks for damage.