Interent Europcar damage charges and dispute

ForexRay

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Don't they have any contact details for you?

Have you asked them?

Any unpaid debt which defaults will affect your credit file, regardless of where it originates-even abroad.

(Perhaps not after Brexit! )

Well; even my credit card company tried to contact them and requested them for evidence of the charges and they didn't give any. So my credit card company refunded the money back to my account. That tells these are planned unfair charges.

wealdroam

ForexRay wrote: »

I'm thinking of taking this to the court.

ForexRay wrote: »

I will be taking this to the court.

Not too sure what you are going to take to court.
Do you have a claim against them?

Sit back, relax and wait for them to take you to court.

Keep_pedalling

thescouselander wrote: »

It's probably too late but frankly Italy is a nation of frauds and scammers. Even the state is at it with their trap in Piza designed to catch foreign motorists.

What rot. Certainly avoid driving in any of their major cities, which have lots of diving restrictions which are difficult to interpret from the road signs, but Italians are no more crooked than the English, and their climate and food is far better than ours so only an idiot would take your highly prejudicial advice.

Keep_pedalling

wealdroam wrote: »

Not too sure what you are going to take to court.
Do you have a claim against them?

Sit back, relax and wait for them to take you to court.

As above, as long as you still have the evidence you should be able to defend any action they take against you.

In future though cover yourself for claims of car hire damage (real or otherwise) with an excess damage policy from a 3rd party insurer. About £40 for an annual European policy.

thescouselander

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

What rot. Certainly avoid driving in any of their major cities, which have lots of diving restrictions which are difficult to interpret from the road signs, but Italians are no more crooked than the English, and their climate and food is far better than ours so only an idiot would take your highly prejudicial advice.

I take it you haven't seen the setup. I don't know if thy've addressed this but all the tourist direction signs move the traffic into the restricted space and then a complicated set of junctions are there to confuse the motorist into taking a wrong turn. There are signs - not ones with symbols but written in very small Italian text. Also, at the time the restricted zone was detailed on the Piza website in Italian but there are no details there when the site is set to other languages.

It was all over the news years ago and I know loads of people who were caught out (including myself). The whole scam just shows the mindset of the country IMO. I used to go there a lot through work and could cite many examples of other dodgy practice. The OPs situation is routine in my experience; we had a lot of this with cars my employer had hired for us but luckily they dealt with it instead of me having to.

I'd also point out Italy scores very poorly on various corruption indexes and comes out as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and scores very poorly vs other countries worldwide. This certainly matches my lived experience.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Italy

agrinnall

Good grief, signs in Italy written in Italian, who would have thought it? It makes you proud of all those polyglot UK city directions signs doesn't it?

ForexRay

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

As above, as long as you still have the evidence you should be able to defend any action they take against you.

In future though cover yourself for claims of car hire damage (real or otherwise) with an excess damage policy from a 3rd party insurer. About £40 for an annual European policy.

I did have this insurance. I got the best premium insurance for car hire excess insurance. Europcar claimed after 8 months. So my insurance has expired by then. Also insurance company says they need documents and claim should be made within 1 month after the incident.

ForexRay

I always thought how these companies could claim unfairly like this and get away with it.
I found the answer: There is not enough support or information available out there to deal with these sort of issues. That is why companies are thriving. I couldn't get much help from anyone. I feel most people are in the same position. I will run this course and see it to the end one way or not!

wealdroam

Can these people help:

The UK European Consumer Centre

Keep_pedalling

agrinnall wrote: »

Good grief, signs in Italy written in Italian, who would have thought it? It makes you proud of all those polyglot UK city directions signs doesn't it?

Think I had better cancel the villa we have booked on Lake Como this summer, I just did not realise the signs were in Italian. I blame Brexit