Europcar hire car difficulty after crash

mightykate

Hi
I hired a cra from Europcar for £94 for a week. I didn't pay excess of
£ 70 odd as I was trying to keep costs down. they explained at time of hire becuase of this if anything happened the charge would be £1000 excess. I thought I'd be fine....

The second to last day of holiday I was parked and hit the curb with the bumper, unfortately the radiator was hit and it leaked. I was advised not to drive it. Breakdown service came and collected car and self and drove me to cottage (in middle of cooutryside in wales) Next morning I rang ffor 1 1/2 trying to organise replacement car.
At 1pm a replacement car turned up (Peugeot).

Europcar tried to take £888 out of my bank account and £250 without any invoice to myself. I( managed to put a hold on this as I don't have enough to pay outright.

They have since taken £250 and want to charge a further £949.14. I have asked for a breakdown of the repairs. Are they required legally to do this? I was told the repair of a radiator shoyuld be much less than £1000. Are they entiltled to pay me the difference if the cost is less than £1000? I feel they have been completely hopeless, whilst I realise I made a great error in not paying the additional £70 at the begining I wanted to know if I have any case legally especially as they tried to withdraw money from my bank account with no word to myself or invoice.
I am still chasing them although response is slow. Any advice would be most welcomed. I have tried reading the small print but cannot find anything regardig repairs and what is expected.

kind regards
a sad Kate :-(

londonTiger

the terms are that you pay the excess or cost of the repair whichever is less.
But unfortunately they will use their own mechanic, own bodyshop etc. So they will rack up the charges to the maximum if they stand to gain. Plus they will charge for the duration the car was "out of service" at their standard hire rates.

But I would say a radiator replacement, bumper replacement, recovery vehicle, lots of admin and damage assessment would easily cost £1000+ if done to OEM standard.

JJG

Unfortunately it looks like it will be an expensive lesson. For future reference you can get third party excess insurance for a lot cheaper than buying direct.

Point four on this link http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire#insurancetrick

londonTiger

JJG wrote: »

Unfortunately it looks like it will be an expensive lesson. For future reference you can get third party excess insurance for a lot cheaper than buying direct.

Point four on this link http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire#insurancetrick

or just buy it from europcar. It will prevent you from being forced to pay stupid charges for tiny pre-existing dents and scratches on the car which you failed to observe from the walk around at the start of the rental.

I learnt that lesson the hard way too and had to pay £600.

The inhouse excess waiver is expensive but the added benefit is that you don't have to pay Europcar the excess and then claim it back from the excess insurance. This is fine for one off car hires but no good if you hire multiple cars anually because excess insurance is just an annual thing.

JJG

londonTiger wrote: »

or just buy it from europcar. It will prevent you from being forced to pay stupid charges for tiny pre-existing dents and scratches on the car which you failed to observe from the walk around at the start of the rental.

I learnt that lesson the hard way too and had to pay £600.

The inhouse excess waiver is expensive but the added benefit is that you don't have to pay Europcar the excess and then claim it back from the excess insurance. This is fine for one off car hires but no good if you hire multiple cars anually because excess insurance is just an annual thing.

Excess insurance can be annual or over the hire car period. It can be from around £2.50 a day so a weeks hire car excess insurance would be about £21. Much better to spend £21 than the £70 europcar would charge.

Norfolk_Jim

Can you recommend an insurer who sells this?

YorkshireTraveller

We use insurance4carhire and get their annual worldwide policy.

We choose to have a policy that also covers the two of us for independent travel (not all insurance excess companies offer this).

We take the policy out (and never renew automatically) using the link from TopCashback to get a 15% saving (used to be 25%!).

We have never had to claim on the policy so can't advise on how good their claims department is.

We must have saved several hundreds of £'s over the years given that we rent cars four or five times per year and now always decline to accept the rental company exorbitant excess coverage charges.

Hope this helps.