Motor home hire gone bad

houdini1976

I wonder if anyone can give me some advice. I hired a motor home through Unbeatable Hire now called MotorHolme last august.This is something i saved up for months for so i could take my boys on a adventure. When we collected the vehicle it was in poor condition. The shower was dirty, the rear window was broken and could not be opened a cupboard under the sink would not close causing items to be thrown from the cupboard when driving. The gas fridge did not work, therefore we couldnt store any items in the fridge for 1 week. I paid £1097 of which £600 i paid before the holiday plus a £160 damage waiver.. They never collected the remaining amount as they were supposed to do before the holiday. I assumed i had paid the full amount for the hire of the vehicle, until i recieved a bill from them 2 weeks after the holiday. for the motorhome. plus a £160 damage waiver. Unfortunatly on the holiday the motorhome wouldnt make it up a hill, the rac were called and when they were manuvring the vehicle it gently touched a grass verge and craked the rear light cluster. On returning from the holiday i recieved a bill from unbeatabe hire for £750. £400 for the remainder of the hire cost and the rest was for the damage caused to the vehicle and excess petrol used.

It does say that the collision damage waiver doesnt cover reversing manuovres in the small print, but this was not a reversing manuovre and as i say this was basically hidden in the small print. I assumed the whole point of a CDW is so you dont incur costs like this later on.

So i disputed this with them and said that i wasnt happy with the condition that the motorhome was in on collection and that i feel the CDW i paid should cover the damage costs.

So they have my £600 for the hire fee, £160 damage waiver and £100 deposit. The £100 deposit has yet to be returned.

They have now sent the outstanding amount to a collection agency. The amount is now £915. How do i dispute this with the collection agency and how can i get the amount owing reduced. I am willing to pay the outstanding £400 for the hire of the vehicle and £80 excess petrol costs but nothing more. I feel that they breched their contract with me when the motorhome was given to us in a poor standard. Any help and advice would be greatly apprieciated. Many thanks



Also i have photos of the dirty shower, broken window and cupboard door

JJ_Egan

You should not have accepted at the point of delivery .You did and basically accepted all those faults .
You should have put all your complaints in writing that month .

BykerSands

What's your issue here, the fact they've asked you to pay the full amount or the state of the vehicle?

If it was so bad why didn't you refuse to take it at the time?

If the RAC crashed it why aren't they paying?

houdini1976

I did put a complaint in writing, they offered me £50 which i wouldnt accept

houdini1976

Well because i had no choice. Either i take the vehicle or no holiday. My boys had been looking forward to it for months. They had no replacement vehicle. I had taken time off work. My issue is that they are making me pay for damage to the vehicle when i had already paid a collision damage waiver. In my opinion due to the problems with the vehicle they should not have charged me. The hire company are aware how the damage occured and that the RAC were trying to manoeuvre the vehicle at the time.

BykerSands

houdini1976 wrote: »

Well because i had no choice. Either i take the vehicle or no holiday. My boys had been looking forward to it for months. They had no replacement vehicle. I had taken time off work. My issue is that they are making me pay for damage to the vehicle when i had already paid a collision damage waiver. In my opinion due to the problems with the vehicle they should not have charged me. The hire company are aware how the damage occured and that the RAC were trying to manoeuvre the vehicle at the time.

So what have the RAC said about crashing it?

unholyangel

houdini1976 wrote: »

Well because i had no choice. Either i take the vehicle or no holiday. My boys had been looking forward to it for months. They had no replacement vehicle. I had taken time off work. My issue is that they are making me pay for damage to the vehicle when i had already paid a collision damage waiver. In my opinion due to the problems with the vehicle they should not have charged me. The hire company are aware how the damage occured and that the RAC were trying to manoeuvre the vehicle at the time.

You would perhaps be entitled to argue a proportionate deduction would be reasonable - but for the amount outstanding at present, I'd expect it to be really quite major - either in causing you expenses you wouldn't have otherwise incurred and/or severely impacting on your ability to enjoy your holiday.

I can understand why you weren't in a position to reject though given that several of the issues you highlight probably wouldn't have been obvious to you until after a period of time using the vehicle. Although you could also argue you were mitigating your losses by accepting the vehicle - and that a refund would have been disproportionate to a reduction in price especially for what seemed like trivial breaches at the time of accepting the vehicle.

We don't discuss reduction in price here often so I can understand why other posters would forget about it being an option given in consumer rights law (sale of goods act, supply of goods and services act and also the new consumer rights act) as an alternative to a refund.

unholyangel

Oh and as for the damage, you are liable to the hire company, the breakdown service are liable to you (presuming it was your breakdown service and that it was caused by their agents negligence rather than your own).

If the breakdown service was provided with the hire then it would be up to the hire company to recover it from the breakdown service.

houdini1976

I have no idea, i would assume that is for the hire company to follow up, it wasnt my breakdown service it was the hire companies.

BykerSands

unholyangel wrote: »

You would perhaps be entitled to argue a proportionate deduction would be reasonable - but for the amount outstanding at present, I'd expect it to be really quite major - either in causing you expenses you wouldn't have otherwise incurred and/or severely impacting on your ability to enjoy your holiday.

I can understand why you weren't in a position to reject though given that several of the issues you highlight probably wouldn't have been obvious to you until after a period of time using the vehicle. Although you could also argue you were mitigating your losses by accepting the vehicle - and that a refund would have been disproportionate to a reduction in price especially for what seemed like trivial breaches at the time of accepting the vehicle.

We don't discuss reduction in price here often so I can understand why other posters would forget about it being an option given in consumer rights law (sale of goods act, supply of goods and services act and also the new consumer rights act) as an alternative to a refund.

For a vehicle hired in August 2015?

arcon5

Pay what you agree you owe then write your dispute to the agency and ignore further threats until they send court papers - if they ever do!