Don’t Get Taken For A Ride With Your Car Hire Excess Insurance

Unfortunately, a number of unscrupulous car rental companies operating throughout Europe continue to devise more and more insidious ways of ripping off the unsuspecting customer – and this despite the efforts of the UK European Consumer Centre (UKECC) to persuade such firms to practice much greater transparency and fairness. Here are just a few examples:

Accessories & Extras

There are some safety features that you may not be able to do without, and child seats fall into that category if you have young passengers.

According to the Express newspaper recently, it can cost as much to hire child seats for your hire car as it does to hire the car itself.

A further favourite of the car rental companies when it comes to gathering another daily receipt is the charge for the hire of a sat nav device.

Insurance

The area that has attracted probably the most widespread condemnation and criticism is European car hire insurance.

It is a subject which critics consider to be so shrouded by car rental companies in secrecy that it completely lacks any transparency.

Customers are typically not always advised at the time of making their rental booking, for example, either of the cost of insurance for the vehicle or – perhaps more critically – the cost of the excess insurance necessary for protection against potential excess charges which might amount to as much as £1,500.

Especially hard sell tactics are then used by the more unscrupulous operators to more or fewer force customers into buying excess insurance at a grossly inflated price.

This is one rip off which is fairly easy to avoid simply by arranging excess insurance from a UK-based specialist provider – like us here at Bettersafe– before you start your journey.

That way, you may be certain of reputable, comprehensive excess protection whatever amount is attached to the cover that comes with your hire car.

Fuel

One of the latest rip-offs gaining ground in Europe is the “empty tank” fuel policy.

Your hire car is supplied with a full tank of fuel (which you are paying for), and the company’s policy is for you to return the vehicle with an empty tank.

Clearly, it is well-nigh impossible to judge your fuel consumption so accurately as to ensure that the tank is empty – but the policy has the effect of making you pay twice for the fuel that remains in the car when you return it.

Alleged Damage

It may be only when you arrive back home that you discover that the hire car company in some distant corner of Europe has debited your credit card for the repair of the alleged damage.

The practice makes it especially important to inspect the vehicle very when it is handed over to you and once again when you return it – inspection sheets need to be signed by a responsible agent for the company and you might also want to keep your own photographic record of any pre-existing damage or the absence of any new damage when you return the car.

Getting ripped off when you are on holiday may be especially galling, particularly if it is by a rogue car rental company. Hopefully, some of the points made here might help you avoid the more obvious traps and pitfalls.