WARNING RE: HERTZ CAR RENTAL

[PaulT]

Now, as has been said these operations are normally franchise based. I would not put it beyond a franchisee saying to their employees:

'if the cars come back with fuel report it as empty and you will get a bonus'

especially if the hirer is from another country.

I have posted elsewhere about collecting a Hertz car at Blagnac late at night with the documentation showing just a couple of scratches on the car, being unable to inspect the car due to no lighting in the collection compound and in the light of morning discovering far more damage meaning contacting Hertz etc, hence I would never hire from Hertz again.

[Théière]

It does sound a very apt name for a company. Makes MO'L sound like mother teresa

[Gardengirl]

[quote user="Théière"][quote user="sid"]

Ha, yes, chicken and egg!  I've just gone through all this for our "big" holiday next year, and now double-checked all the hire car arrangements as a result of this thread. Much more open and upfront for USA, no extras at all (unless you want GPS and that sort of extra), certainly the collision waiver stuff is included already in my package.

[/quote]

The devil is always in the detail Sid, what does CDW actually cover, most don't cover tyres or windsreens etc etc etc. Even the super CDW waiver doesn't.  I use after market insurer for this purpose Insurance4carhire, They cover for a year for what you could welll pay for a week (certainly in France)  and they also cover the bit's the others don't.  We had a tyre damaged on a hire car in france and that wouldn't have been covered by the hirers cover but was by afformentioned company. Payout was swift too.

[/quote]

It's very useful to know that you had a good result via Insure4carhire Teapot. We've always gone through them after reading a recommendation by one of the travel writers in a weekend paper. I've recommended them to others too, but nobody  who has gone through them has had damage to their rental cars; so now I can recount your experience too.

We've always taken photos of the fuel gauge and mileage and also we keep the fuel bill until ages after the car rental just in case of a challenge.

We had a couple of good experiences with Hertz a while back now at Nimes airport; we checked the car carefully under the best light in the Hertz car park and found several areas of damage not marked on the sheet, nothing serious, but you never know. I returned to the Hertz desk to the front of the still long queue, and explained; I was told to mark them on the sheet, and the girl at the desk signed it. Sigh of relief from the people behind, as we all expected she would have to go outside to check. Not long after that we rented a small automatic, same company, same airport; on going outside we found we had a Prius hybrid. At that time you had to reach right up with your foot to release the brake; I hate anything at all complicated or unusual and had paid extra to be the second driver. I went back in, again a long queue, which I jumped, and got myself removed from being second driver and received a refund immediately.

We enjoyed having the Prius, and have had one ourselves for quite a while now - and I only drive it on French autoroutes to give my husband a break on the long drive north/south. Still not keen on driving the Prius even then, but it gives excellent savings.

[AnOther]

Whenever I picked up a car without being able to inspect it properly I always used to write 'ACCEPTED UNSEEN'  on the form before signing it.

I never has a problem as it happened so I don't really know or if it would have stood up in court !

Latterly my company organised the cars and they were covered by their own insurance so after that I never even bothered looking, since they didn't have my credit card it didn't matter !