holiday car insurance extortion

worldwheeler

Recently travelled to Mexico and hired a car through holiday autos. The hire include all compulsory charges. On arrival in Mexico at the car hire counter we were told we had to pay a further $10 per day for SLI insurance. We told them we had excess insurance and we had purchased through a site that included all compulsory charges. They said we had to pay or we could not take a car.
Given that we were in a foreign country and were in no position to argue we paid the SLI with a CC as I thought that we could get the money back from the card as the money charge was extorted from us.
On return to the UK we contacted holiday autos who confirmed that any SLI would have been optional and not compulsory. We tried contacting the Mexican hire company, named American car hire, who fudged a reply and then on further contact they replied with a different email address and said that they had nothing to do with the hire and it must have been another company.
We contacted our CC and put a claim on the £110 extra charged while in Mexico. The CC company has now replied that the insurance service has been received and is therefore over and they can not do anything to recover the charge.

My argument was that the charge was made by extortion and threat and that the sale of goods and services act should be enough to enable the CC to retract the payment from AmericanCar hire and refund our card.

Does anyone have any experience advice as to how to proceed?
If what the CC company states is true any hire company is at liberty to extort any amount of charges for pre paid hires on threat of not supplying a car at the collection desk.

NiftyDigits

Perhaps you can include a link to the Car Hire Excess Insurance for which you paid?

worldwheeler

hello, The excess insurance is for the excess charged should tyres or windows or a crash happen. There is no link. I am trying to find out if the goods and services act covers for extortion. American Car Rentals extorted a charge for a service that was optional under the threat of refusing us to take the car. We were forced to pay for a service that was not required.

NiftyDigits

When you sign a contract under duress, you should actually sign it as such. Then take a photo of the contract in question.
Otherwise it becomes hearsay.
So they cheated you, but you cannot prove that it was under duress.
Though perhaps they didn't cheat you in the way that you imagine.
Your car hire excess did not cover SLI, but it seems that SLI is not mandatory, only recommended.
Only TPL is mandatory, but that was already included in the rate.

leylandsunaddict

SLI isn't to do with excesses. It's Supplementary Liability Insurance which gives you third party liability cover. If you are involved in an accident with your hire car, the driver is insured against bodily injury and property damage to a third party up to the limit stated on the policy.

worldwheeler

Thank you for the responses.
I did not want the SLI insurance and would have taken my chances of not running anyone down.
If this happens in the future it would seem that it would be best to film the staff insisting on payment of charges or no car.
In the meantime I would advise people to avoid this company America Car Rental (http://www.america-carrental.com/) as even without the extortion the car we hired was the worst car I have ever hired

NiftyDigits

worldwheeler wrote: »

Thank you for the responses.
I did not want the SLI insurance and would have taken my chances of not running anyone down.
If this happens in the future it would seem that it would be best to film the staff insisting on payment of charges or no car.
In the meantime I would advise people to avoid this company America Car Rental (http://www.america-carrental.com/) as even without the extortion the car we hired was the worst car I have ever hired

On the other hand, it could be that the TPL was not included in your likely very cheap rate and in fact that is for what you were charged.
We don't know, as we cannot see your invoice.

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