Forced to buy insurance at Hertz desk

gregston8

Hi, I've been fairly loyal to Hertz for hiring cars abroad over the last few years, not the cheapest but fairly hassle-free, but last week at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, we were told we had to pay an extra E150 for insurance. We said this has never happened before, and that we had separate excess insurance. He said this was a post Brexit thing, and that we should blame 'Mr Boris'. As far as we could tell, we had absolutely no choice. Currently an extra £299 is being held on my credit card. 
Can this be right? Any comments welcome.

eDicky

In what way did you have absolutely no choice? Why is an extra £299 being held?

Your separate excess cover has no relevance to the hire firm and is best not mentioned.

Have you contacted Hertz UK HQ?

brianposter

What did you book ? What do the T&Cs say about withholding a deposit ?

[Deleted User]

Sounds right. It's much harder for them to chase you for claims now that the UK is out of the EU, so we get to pay a non-EU insurance tax.

Another brexit bonus.

maxisadog

I didn't think about the Brexit angle to this. Had exactly the same issue with OKMobiity at Alicante. If we didn't stump up an extra 370 Euros we couldn't have the car! 

Brexit, the disaster that just keeps on giving!

Lavendyr

[Deleted User] said:

Sounds right. It's much harder for them to chase you for claims now that the UK is out of the EU, so we get to pay a non-EU insurance tax.

Another brexit bonus.

It's absolutely not right. There is no truth in what the insurance company said. You are not required to have excess insurance at all. The required insurance should be included in the price you pay, together with the excess (which can be substantial, hence why car hire companies typically place a hold on your card for the total of the excess until the car is returned and inspected). 

Brexit is certainly to blame for a lot of things but this is not one.

Lavendyr

maxisadog said:

I didn't think about the Brexit angle to this. Had exactly the same issue with OKMobiity at Alicante. If we didn't stump up an extra 370 Euros we couldn't have the car! 

Brexit, the disaster that just keeps on giving!

See above and my post on your thread. This has nothing to do with Brexit, just sharp (shoddy) practice at the car hire desk. 

[Deleted User]

Someone is desperate to defend brexit.

Barkin

Lavendyr said:

maxisadog said:

I didn't think about the Brexit angle to this. Had exactly the same issue with OKMobiity at Alicante. If we didn't stump up an extra 370 Euros we couldn't have the car! 

Brexit, the disaster that just keeps on giving!

See above and my post on your thread. 

... which seems to have vanished. 🙄

Barkin

[Deleted User] said:

Someone is desperate to defend brexit.

Not at all. It's nothing to do with brexit, and all to do with hire companies *lying* to customers in order to sell them an excess cover policy that they don't have to have. 

DullGreyGuy

I'm fairly sure that in the UK and EU that adding additional items that are compulsory and not originally stated when the contract is entered into for consumers is illegal. Like AO turning up on the day with your new fridge only to say that if you want it you need to pay an additional delivery insurance else they'll take it back to the warehouse. 

Sales guys are well known for stretching, bending and just ignoring the truth. If it sounds goods and gets the sales then many will say it even if its an out and out lie and many others will find a way to justify it to themselves as being kind of right. So yes, being out the EU will make debt recovery harder and whilst they take authorisation for the excess sometimes they cannot collect on it. 

The only counterpoint is, having done many years in complaints, when listening to a customer's version of events and then going back and listening to the telephone conversation they are talking about that the two dont always fully correlate. Sometimes the customer is right, sometimes they are exaggerating, sometimes they got it wrong but you can see the cause of the mixup and some customers out and out lie.