It is usual for a range of items to be excluded by the hire companys insurance provider - screen chips and punctured tyres tend to be the most common things that customers seem to feel bitter about paying for.
The damage recharge or 'fair wear and tear' policies vary widely between rental firms, for example one of the nationls will charge you £250 deposit to rent a car. This deposit becomes your excess in the event of damage being done - even if you do £6000 worth. You can also take out an additional PAI/CDW insurance at a few quid extra that gets you out of paying the excess.
As was pointed out earlier in the thread, the calculated cost of the repair will also usually include a 'loss of use' portion to cover lost revenue whilst the vehicle is being repaired.
But often there is no loss of use, since, as has also been pointed out, customers are given vehicles with minor damage already present. Quite apart from the scope for fraud which this practice gives the companies, by stinging several customers for the cost of the same repair, it also illustrates that it's likely that repair of minor damage is deferred to a quiet period when the car would not be earning income anyway.
I think any "loss of use" claim by a company against a customer, if the customer be minded to query it, should be supported by documentary evidence of actual loss of use. That is to say they would need to show that during the entire time the repair took, the company not only had no similar cars available to hire out, but that they actually turned customers away who asked for that type of car. Most customers would in fact not be turned away but be offered a different type of car.
If they're offered a more expensive car, at no extra charge, then fair enough, a loss-of-use could be established based on the difference in hire fees between the two types of car. But if they're given a cheaper car, in theory there should be a negative loss-of-use.
IIRC Budget used to (and for all I know still do) have a "renters own insurance" box which you could tic to say you had your own insurance cover and didn't need theirs. The rental cost was lower as a result. They wanted to have evidence of the existence of your policy.
If the damage ever gets repaired, there will be loss of use when the car is in the bodyshop and therefore unavailable for rent. Depending on the company, most have very strict policies in place regarding vehicle downtime as this impacts on their utilisation figures, so it is in their interest to turn around the repair as quickly as possible.
Because of this many companies will defer sorting minor scuffs or screen chips until the car gets really scruffy, or even to the defleet stage - and obviously a decent firm would know this and not charge loss of use to every customer that caused a stone chip.
Utter tosh :-) The asset of the company will be unavailable whilst it is being repaired because of damage caused by a hirer, or at least whilst the hirer was responsible for the vehicle.
I do agree that there is scope for upping costs on LOU charges, as there is on the repair cost itself but this is not solely the land of car hire firms - many tool and plant hire firms have similar policies.
Sometimes you have the option the keep the vehicle on hire and arrange the repair yourself, and usually a sensible query will result in reduced charges. A badly cracked screen will mean the car will be off the road for a day, a punctured tyre however only takes maybe an hour to replace so I would not expect to pay a days LOU for that.
Some rental firms take a set of digital photos before and after every rental period to assist in identifying damage, most firms have slightly different damage recharge policies/excess costs/CDW options so really it's down to the consumer to be aware of the implications before the hire commences. Bottom line is that if the vehicle is damaged whilst in your care, you are likely to pay. If you can't be bothered to go around the car and see that all the existing damage is marked on the check sheet, or don't find out the terms of the CDW then just like everything else in consumer land, buyer beware, especially if all they were initially bothered about was the price.
Yes indeed it would be "unavailable for rent", but my point is that by carefully scheduling the timing of the repair to coincide with a period where there would be (anticipated to be) no rent coming in anyway (due to the company having enough other cars available to satisfy demand), then said loss of use would not in fact lead to loss of income.
On the contrary, it is in their interest to turn a repair as slowly as possible. I'm restricting the scope of this to minor cosmetic stuff like "dings" which do not actually prevent the car from being rented out.
Exactly.
Indeed.
I dare say another possibility might be for the hirer to try to encourage the company to defleet the car and sell it to him, dents and all, for a suitable price.
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