car hire damage charge

boat_girl

Hello,

posting on behalf of my inlaws who are currently in Spain. They took a car with europcar from Murcia airport to their holiday house. They parked car outside house on the flat and went in and next thing they knew it was rolling away toward the hill, it flipped over, landed upside down in the valley. It seems handbrake has failed, they have a picture of it still in on position on the hill. They didn't leave car in gear but have been charged £1700 for all the rescue trucks who brought the car up. Is this legal, what can they do? Car was clearly at fault, they have taken a picture of a very bald tyre as well so would not be road worthy in this country. Will there Credit card company help them?

spiro

They need to get the car checked by a garage. The garage can check if the handbrake is faulty. There may be problems if the garage cant prove if the problem existed before the crash or was caused by the crash.
The problem will be proving that they put the handbrake on when they got out of the car.
Their holiday or home insurnace will probably have legal cover, contact them immediatly ideally the holiday insurance as they will have more experience with dealing with overseas issues.

boliston

boat_girl wrote: »

Hello,

posting on behalf of my inlaws who are currently in Spain. They took a car with europcar from Murcia airport to their holiday house. They parked car outside house on the flat and went in and next thing they knew it was rolling away toward the hill, it flipped over, landed upside down in the valley. It seems handbrake has failed, they have a picture of it still in on position on the hill. They didn't leave car in gear but have been charged £1700 for all the rescue trucks who brought the car up. Is this legal, what can they do? Car was clearly at fault, they have taken a picture of a very bald tyre as well so would not be road worthy in this country. Will there Credit card company help them?

Surely they can only charge up to the limit of the insurance excess, usually £500 (or less if you buy a waiver)

boat_girl

thank you, the car has already been taken away, it was very badly damaged so they wouldn't have been able to take it to an independent garage. Will look into the holiday insurance policy. Thanks