Easirent Car Loan

Fergie76

Can your wife not claim that she entered her PIN under intimidation from the 3 men? I can't remember the outcomes, but there have been plenty of complaints of this nature from when clamping was legal and people were forces to enter their PINs to get their clamped cars back.

Might be worth having a trawl of the old parking threads to see if you can find an example and of the outcome.

DoaM

I think the term might be "payment under duress"?

[Deleted User]

Fergie76 wrote: »

Can your wife not claim that she entered her PIN under intimidation from the 3 men?

This would be a serious crime, of course, for which the OP would need to get the Police involved to have any chance of a refund.

Very different demanding payment for "illegal" parking to payment for alleged damage to a hire car.

Fergie76

DoaM wrote: »

I think the term might be "payment under duress"?

That's the one.

Fergie76

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

This would be a serious crime, of course, for which the OP would need to get the Police involved to have any chance of a refund.

Very different demanding payment for "illegal" parking to payment for alleged damage to a hire car.

Why is it different?

[Deleted User]

Fergie76 wrote: »

Why is it different?

Seriously ?

I'm not getting into an off topic discussion about the "legality" of parking fines on private land (there is a whole forum for that).

All I will say is that it would be very unwise for the OP to make spurious and vexatious allegations which are clearly untrue.
They insisted she paid for the damages but, unless they were carrying baseball bats, I can't see she was under any "duress".

naedanger

Tammboy wrote: »

I have contacted my credit card company who refused to put a block on the payment insisting a pin transaction is a guaranteed form a payment. I raised the issue with the CC dispute team but they say they can't get involved in these sort of disputes.

So i'm at loss - was is my recourse here? Is there anything else I can do? Does anyone else have experience of this type of thing?

Many thanks!

The CC company may be right in saying they cannot block the transaction.

However if the price of the car hire was over £100 then they are still jointly liable for the service and they cannot avoid their responsibilities if your wife complains effectively.

Assuming the price of the car hire was over £100 and paid by credit card:
I suggest your wife writes to the CC company stating that she required the £250 to be refunded by them as they are jointly liable under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. I suggest she explains that she denied causing the damage and that it must have existed prior to her hire of the car. She should add that she did pay at the time as she felt pressured to do so, but has since been told by others that she should not have done so unless the company could show, on the balance of probability, that she had caused the damage.

If the cc company refuse to refund the money then I suggest she again writes demanding a copy of their complaint procedure. She should then follow that process to the end (if necessary). The last step enables her to take her complaint to the independent Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

If FOS do not uphold her complaint she can reject their proposed solution and still take legal action. However if she even starts legal action then FOS will not get involved. So best first trying the CC company's own process including going to FOS (since they may uphold her complaint) before considering legal action.

I suggest you read the following:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-your-purchases

If the car hire was not paid by credit card then I suggest she should consider taking the car hire company to the small claim court. (My view is that the onus will be on the car hire company to show on the balance of probability the damage was caused by her and I agree with those who think the car hire company will find this very difficult if they don't have evidence the car did not have this damage prior to her hire of it. Especially if the damage was very minor. Based on what you have said it seems to me the car hire company have been very lackadaisical.)

Fergie76

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Seriously ?

I'm not getting into an off topic discussion about the "legality" of parking fines on private land (there is a whole forum for that).

All I will say is that it would be very unwise for the OP to make spurious and vexatious allegations which are clearly untrue.
They insisted she paid for the damages but, unless they were carrying baseball bats, I can't see she was under any "duress".

I not talking about parking charges, I was using that scenario as an example. I could very well see why a women on her on would be intimidated by 3 blokes saying you need to pay this now. You don't need baseball bats to intimidate someone!! Whether she was or wasn't I don't know. I was only suggesting that as a possible way of doing a charge back on the card.

[Deleted User]

Fergie76 wrote: »

I could very well see why a women on her on would be intimidated by 3 blokes saying you need to pay this now.

I was only suggesting that as a possible way of doing a charge back on the card.

Not good advice, in my opinion. Do you really think the Bank would perform a chargeback on that basis? There would have to be police involvement and a crime reported.

Fergie76

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Not good advice, in my opinion. Do you really think the Bank would perform a chargeback on that basis? There would have to be police involvement and a crime reported.

I don't know I am no expert, I was just giving the OP another avenue to investigate.

I don't believe in the clamping cases of charge back that there was police involvement so why would there need to be in this case?

As always the OP is free to ignore this, which they probably will. But I was just relaying a previous example of where people had had charge back even after inputting their PIN.