Bought a Ex hire car without knowing?

GlynD

colino wrote: »

Only tuppenny ha'penny, small time businesses keep their cars for big miles and for that long. The big boys, depending on make and model, tend to dispose of, at maximum, 9 months and 15,000 miles to still convey the "managers car" or "demo model" rubbish, while still attracting near-new price.

Thanks. I kind of suspected that but didn't know enough to speculate.

teffers

I've previously worked for a MAJOR car hire company.
Plenty of them are franchised, meaning that the franchise owner doesn't sell their stock back to the manufacturer.
In my experience this franchised owned stock was run into the ground with little or no servicing.
One car had a family of mice living it.

It's very feasible that a hire car is 40,000 miles and poorly maintained.

RichardD1970

KTF wrote: »

This is based on my experience with Hertz from chatting to the guys behind the desks,

Well, that's convinced me, :rotfl:

neilmcl

Presumably the OP had, and was satisfied with the service history of their vehicle at the time of purchase?

The last 3 cars I've owned were year old, ex-lease vehicles from auction and I never had a single issue with them. On the other hand I've purchased brand new cars from Audi main dealers in the past and each were in & out with various things wrong.

KTF

RichardD1970 wrote: »

Well, that's convinced me, :rotfl:

Just saying based on my experience. Many of them are franchises as stated above so why would they bother telling me the same 'tale' from multiple sources.

I did fine that the further you go up the 'Gold' food chain, the better quality car you got. Opting for stuff that isnt usually rented out like group C automatics tends to get you ones that are less beaten up as well (compared to the regular group C Focus for example).

Still, I digress...

harveybobbles

Could have been owned by G4S and used by the day shift, the night shift and the inbetween shift..

Herzlos

GlynD wrote: »

You're the first person who's said this. If it's true, and it obviously is, then it casts a different light on the subject.

It would have been true a while ago, with the adage "the fastest car is a hire car", but with all the penalties for damage I think most people are terrified of doing anything wrong with them.

colino

Hertz and all the other major players still haven't extended their limits. They do however have more of a mix of sales (which they now actively promote to the public at their, "trade" prices instead of the good old days) and these are older, higher mileage and frankly shabbier. However they are from their long-term hires/leases that wouldn't normally see the light of day until they went to auction when they were totally shagged at three years old. Unfortunately with a threatening, "triple-dip" on the horizon, the business is plagued with early returns from bust businesses.

mwbrown

we bought a 55 plate brand spanking new Renault modus - took it for a test drive, checked everything out..... did the deal.. Went to collect the car on the Friday evening - got it, tried to change the radio channels with the steering column control and nothing....

Went back inside garage, they came out and checked it - thought I was doing it wrong!!! Nah, fault with the steering control for the radio - was booked into the local Renault dealers the following Saturday (bought the car from Motorpoint), they investigated the fault and said it would be about an hour to fix...... decided to wait - 4 hours later still waiting - was told that they had fixed the problem with the radio side of the control, but now we had no wipers and the side lights were permanently on.....

They advised that we would have to leave the car with them and they would have to contact Renault to see if they had any ideas why this had happened... I said ok, but I need a courtesy car...... got the response we don't have any..... I turned round and said to the service manager "not my problem", your mechanics tried to fix it and couldn't.... after about 20 mins and going round in circles I spoke to one the car sales managers and surprise surprise they found a car for me (a 6 month old clio that was delivered to the service bay from the car sales site with aa full tank of fuel)... got a phone call about 10am Monday to say they had fixed the fault.

We dropped the loan car of and picked the car up and it was fine in the 3 years we owned it.

Best memory of the car was, it was due a service and we got a quote from the local Renault dealer and it was something like £115ish, and as luck would have it we were going on holiday to France when the service was due - emailed the nearest Renault dealer to where we were staying in France to ask for a price for servicing the car..... didn't get a reply from them... so decided to go and have a look round whilst on holiday and see what the cost would be.

Middle of the first week on holiday, went in to the Renault dealer and enquired (in poor French lol) about the cost for servicing (to Renault specs) the car and the guy said come back after lunch and it would be about £40 or so..... took the car back, they did a full service to Renault schedules, plugged the computer in for any updates..... Best laugh of the day was the mechanic getting in the wrong side of the car to move it into the service bay (he did this 3 times in total), looking puzzled everytime.

Going to any garage (be it a main dealer, etc) isn't the guarantee of good service, I just tend to use the local garage that I have used for the last few years, reasonable priced, reliable etc.....

photome

^^^^^^^

What has any of that got to do with the OPs problem