SIXT Car rental accident extortionate charge?

Ruddy999

Hi, I recently hired a car from Manchester airport, to visit friends.

I can't afford to run my own car, so hired using SIXT.

I was reversing out of my friend's drive in fog, in the dark, and should've taken more care.

I hit a stone wall and caused what I thought was fairly minor damage to the rear boot door.

SIXT noted the damage down as:
Bumper, rear driver side scratch > 10cm (down to primer)
bumper, rear driver side dent > 3 cm (with paint damage)

So I was expecting maybe a couple of hundred pounds in repair costs.

Today I opened the SIXT letter to find that they have charged £861.43 to my credit card!!!!!????

What? Surely that is extortionate for the damage caused?

I'm kicking myself that a) I didn't take more care reversing and b) that I didn't pay extra for the insurance waver.

I'm struggling for money as it is and this charge on my card will mean there's no way I'll be able to get through the next few months financially. Already have pretty heavy credit card debt.

I really don't know what to do - is there any way of disputing the cost? I remember a family member having much worse damage fixed for a tenth of the price.

I've searched online but couldn't find any similar cases.

And what makes matters worse, they then had the audacity to send me a SIXT express loyalty card a few days later.

Any help/advice/hard truth very much appreciated!

Many thanks.

bowlhead99

Usually there are two types of insurance for rentals.

Firstly, a "loss damage waiver" so that if you crash it, they will not charge you the full repair cost, but only an 'excess' ; so you might pay the first £200, £500, £1,000 or something even if you destroy their car that was worth £20,000. Unless you can guarantee you will not crash, or can afford the £20,000, or arrange for your own insurer to temporarily cover the rental car (difficult to arrange in the UK), it is usually worth spending however many pounds a day for the period of your rental to avoid the potential eye-watering bill ;some companies will make it mandatory.

Secondly if you buy the collision damage waiver and are potentially still on the hook for £500 or £1000 (or whatever) of 'excess' if you crash, you can buy an excess waiver to reduce that to some lower amount, or maybe even zero, by paying them some extra cash up front. I don't usually bother with that second level of insurance unless it's a massive excess, I just get the basic one (to avoid the £20,000 bill) and hope I don't crash and that no vandals come and smash up the car while I'm looking after it.

If they are charging you £860 it sounds like your excess was higher than that. Sixt has pretty high excesses if you don't choose to buy the additional cover. Perhaps there's a lesson for the future. But if the excess was £1000 they will just be charging you what it cost up to that amount, plus maybe a separate damage deposit which you lost by not returning it to them in a perfect condition that they can just rent out again to someone else.

Ruddy999 wrote: »

SIXT noted the damage down as:
Bumper, rear driver side scratch > 10cm (down to primer)
bumper, rear driver side dent > 3 cm (with paint damage)

Today I opened the SIXT letter to find that they have charged £861.43 to my credit card!!!!!????

I remember a family member having much worse damage fixed for a tenth of the price.

OK, so for the 3cm one you have dented the bumper so they need to knock it back into perfect shape (which may or may not be possible, as bumpers are designed to deform when they hit things, so it might need replacing), as well as fix the paint in that area.

And then you have a 10cm scratch which has gone through the clearcoat and through the paint itself right down to the primer. So that isn't something that can just be invisbly touched up with a pen, it will mean taking the bumper off, spraying a perfect blended colour match with the surrounding panels and baking it dry.

You think it should be less than a tenth of the £861? There's no way you get that done for £86, which would buy you only an hour or so of labour at good places. Remember the owner of the car is entitled to get their car back in the same (factory perfect, manufacturer paintwork warranty intact) condition as it was when they lent it to you.

If it was you own car, you might not bother getting a perfect finish, just pay a guy that charges £50 per dent plus callout fee plus paint touch up. But if you've got a long scratch down to the primer and for a car fleet that plans to sell their cars on for thousands (or tens of thousands) of pounds once they hit 3 years old, no reason they have to accept anything less than a full repair, to factory standard. Especially as their car is off the road and giving them no income while this gets fixed. £86 would be a joke.

is there any way of disputing the cost?

The first thing to do is to ask for a breakdown of the £861. You might find it was a £250 damage deposit and a ~£500+VAT sand and respray job. I had a wing repainted on my car earlier in the year and it was well over £500, so it might all be for the repair. They should have an invoice for what the repairs cost or at least the quote for getting the repairs done.

Of course, it's not always transparent as they may get this done through some affiliated paintshop who bills them whatever internal price they decide is appropriate ; and as every bit of damage is unique, you can't make an easy comparison with other prices on the 'high street'. But there should be paperwork of some sort.

Get it, check the terms and conditions of your rental and see if it's allowable. Do you have photos of the damage that you could email to other manufacturer-approved paintshops in your area to get a cost estimate? Then you could assess the 'going rate' and see if there is any grounds for complaint. If you broke their car and the contract allows them to get it fixed and collect the costs of it up to £x, and you admit you did it, they do hold all the cards.

So it may be impossible to get them to budge and charge you a lower amount unless you have some evidence that another repair and paint place could have done the same work to the same standard in the same time and with the same reputation, for significantly less money.

Any help/advice/hard truth very much appreciated!

People who don't own cars often don't appreciate what they really cost to buy and run and fix after an accident. Even people who own old cars and are more fussed about getting A to B than doing it with perfect paintwork, often don't realise what it costs to fix them to factory standard because they will happily do a touchup themselves here or there because they're only going to dent it again next month.

If a new car is £10,000 or £20,000 or £30,000 when it is made efficiently on a production line in one go, it will be some large multiple of that to rebuild a car out of replacement new parts plus labour plus reworking and refitting and repainting all the individual panels giving a profit margin to the people doing the work. As someone who isn't used to spending £800 on anything, let alone spending some multiple of £10,000 on a brand new car, you might think £800 for a bumper is Bugatti Veyron money. But really, time and materials and professional oversight to fix damage on any modern car to factory standard, costs hundreds..

That is why you get people driving around in £2000 cars who are upset that an insurance company said their dilapidated old car was 'beyond economic repair' when it just had a prang on one corner. If that was your situation you could settle with the insurers and fix it to whatever standard you liked. But if you break something of someone else's, you have to fix it to whatever standard they like.

thescouselander

Surely a bumper respray can't be much more than a couple of hundered quid. Especially to sixt who'll get the job Ex VAT and who probably has arrangements with various maintenance and repair companies.

In reality I bet they won't even bother repairing the car and the damage will be there until they flog the car at auction where the effect of the damage on price will probably be minimal.

wba31

Ruddy999 wrote: »

I'm struggling for money as it is and this charge on my card will mean there's no way I'll be able to get through the next few months financially. Already have pretty heavy credit card debt.

I have nothing to offer with regards to Sixt's charge, however if you have debt and are struggling get some impartial advice - StepChange - 0800 138 1111, National Debtline - 0808 808 4000, or visit your local CAB. Don't suffer because of this, these guys will help you for free

AdrianC

Bear in mind that, as well as the cost of repairing the damage, you agreed to pay the rental company the cost of the hire periods for which it was unavailable. If it took three days to fix and let the paint dry, then you owe them three days rental - at full rack rate.

Read the Ts & Cs. You agreed to that by hiring the car.
https://www.sixt.co.uk/fileadmin/sys/agb/sixt_GB_en.pdf
Points 11.9 and 11.10

BeenThroughItAll

Depending on the car, a bare new bumper if required could easily be a couple of hundred quid, plus paint and sundries, plus labour to remove, strip any transferable parts like foglights etc, prep and paint new bumper (and paint any areas required to blend the repair in), finish bumper, fit transferable parts, fit bumper, and finish the repair.

Add in a couple of days' hire charge and boom - £900 quid.

dannyrst

AdrianC wrote: »

Bear in mind that, as well as the cost of repairing the damage, you agreed to pay the rental company the cost of the hire periods for which it was unavailable. If it took three days to fix and let the paint dry, then you owe them three days rental - at full rack rate.

Read the Ts & Cs. You agreed to that by hiring the car.
https://www.sixt.co.uk/fileadmin/sys/agb/sixt_GB_en.pdf
Points 11.9 and 11.10

Probably for the first time.

thescouselander

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Depending on the car, a bare new bumper if required could easily be a couple of hundred quid, plus paint and sundries, plus labour to remove, strip any transferable parts like foglights etc, prep and paint new bumper (and paint any areas required to blend the repair in), finish bumper, fit transferable parts, fit bumper, and finish the repair.

Add in a couple of days' hire charge and boom - £900 quid.

Have you seen the bumpers on modern cars? They don't match well anyway even from the factory so no need to blend with the adjacent panels. Painting a bumper really isn't a massive job.

Also, as I said, I doubt thry'll even bother fixing it. I drive loads of hire cars and the vast majority have bumps and scrapes in various places. Sounds like scam to me. Unfortunately this is common practice in the hire car industry.

littlerock

Last year I hired a car from a well known firm (not sure but think it was Avis) via a fly drive deal to Newcastle with BA. When we arrived our booked car was not available and they offered a free upgrade to a larger one. Not sure we wanted to drive a larger one or pay the extra petrol costs and when we looked at it, it was not in pristine condition, in fact it looked like the one the staff used. But we were on a tight timetable and there was nothing else available so we took it anyway.

I checked it out and marked on the forms the damage, mostly scratches, I could see. However a couple of years back, in Canada, a lorry threw up a stone which made a hole in the windscreen of the brand new RV we had hired. Fortunately I had been forewarned that there was a pretty high excess charge from the rental company there, so I had also insured against the excess and was glad to have done so. So I did the same in Newcastle.

We had an entirely uneventful week, car wise, visiting rural Northumberland, nothing on the roads, never even parked near another vehicle. When we returned the car, someone different to the person we hired from, came out to inspect. She walked all round the car in a disinterested manner and then marched straight to the back and bent down to peer under the rear bumper. There is, she said triumphantly, a 3cm scratch on the bumper which I shall have to ask you to pay for.

I did not scratch the car, never even drove over anything which could scratch it. I had however not thought to look underneath the bumper for scratches when I signed for the car. I looked her straight in the eye and said, That's fine, I am insured for everything including the excess, so you can do what you like. She glared back at me and eventually said, well it is only just 3cm so you are just inside the limit and will not be charged.

I suspect the scratch was regularly invoked to get unsuspecting drivers to pay up.

Keep_pedalling

Almost certainly little you can do, but for future reference take out a separate excess insurance policy, far cheaper than the extortionate price car hire firms charge.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-car-hire#insurancetrick

Ectophile

thescouselander wrote: »

Also, as I said, I doubt thry'll even bother fixing it. I drive loads of hire cars and the vast majority have bumps and scrapes in various places. Sounds like scam to me. Unfortunately this is common practice in the hire car industry.

If they choose not to fix it, then it will reduce the resale value when they do come to sell it.

If you were buying a second-hand car, would you pay as much for a car covered in dents and scratches as for one in immaculate condition?