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Previous: Our advice
Previous: Our advice
Wasn't thrilled with this company.
Their website booking acknowledgment promised confirmation or decline within 24 hours. Didn't come. I phoned them and arranged car; they gave me a smaller car but for the same price as the next larger one I originally requested. It was a busy holiday weekend and by then short notice, so I didn't quibble. Tried to get me to take the collision damage waiver of $20 per day, which I refused. Picked up car OK, out of hours, with half a tank of gas and paperwork confirming this. Other paperwork said to return car with full tank. Did so, and they didn't adjust for the half tank of gas. "Not their policy" they said, in response to my email. They got a lot of things right, but also got a lot of things wrong.
Be careful when searching overseas on www.arguscarhire.com. I booked online a VW Touran and found the hire company is giving us a Vauxhall. When you check the website they cover themselves by saying VW or similar. There was no communication if we still wished to hire the vauhall. They continued to charge us !
Misleading information with no communication. Still awaiting a reply.
Most rental car firms take an imprint of your credit card but don't charge through until you return your car. I use a card with $500 limit and just before I return the car I transfer an amount so that fee of the rental means that the card is near its limit! This stops them appying extra costs.
We hired a small hatchback from Crown Rentals in Queenstown. We paid an extra $12 per day to limit our liability to $250 in the event of any accident.
When we returned the car, the manager went straight to the front of the car, looked underneath the front spoiler and said there was a new scratch and she was going to claim the $250 on our credit card! She didn't check the rest of the car. I couldn't tell if there were any new scratches, certainly none were visible from normal viewing angles.
This is a nice little earner for them, they had our credit card number and our signature. They know customers are on their way to the airport and don't have much time to argue, and that a local will realise it will cost more than $250 to fight them, and overseas customers are out of the country when the credit card statement arrives.
All in all, a very sneaky practice, which I hope will eventually rebound on them.
Don't waste your $250. Take them to the Disputes Tribunal. It'll only cost you $30.67. It is up to them to prove, 1 you caused it and 2 the true cost of "repair". You can download the form at http://www.justice.govt.nz/tribunals/disputes-tribunal/forms-and-guides
We recently had the experience of having our rental car damaged in a car park. The cost of the damage (a small scratch on the bumper)amounted to $850 AUD for a new bumper!! We were covered for the excess by the travel insurance, but had to wait for the rental firm to give us a quote of the cost of the repair. The rental firm had immeditely taken out of our credit card the $2750 AUD excess and the wait of approx 8 weeks to receive the quote from the rental car firm meant that we had to carry the cost of the insurance excess for this period and longer as the travel insurance claim then had to be processed. We also had to make several ph calls to Australia to sort the mater out. Apparantly, according to the travel ins firm, this is a common delay in getting quotes from rental car firms in Australia.