Charge from car hire company

[Autumn101]

This may be long but I’ll try to add in all details

We hired a car for 4 weeks over the summer from a well known company - a higher end premium estate as we had a large amount of luggage so needed the boot space.

Picked up from one location and drove a few hours to our next destination. After a while we noticed the car seemed to have a fairly harsh vibration (not dependent on speed), not what you’d expect from this kind of car. We rang the hire company who initially said they’d send someone round to check it. After numerous phone calls the first day nobody came and it turned out we’d need to drive it to a rental center to swap for another car.

The nearest office was around 2 hours drive away and had no larger cars at all so they pretty much just shrugged their shoulders....... So we persevered as we needed the space.

Woke up one morning and there was a crack in windscreen. Rang the rental company who again offered no advice and just said we’ll sort it when you give it back. We were concerned that a car with a crack and a noticeable vibration wasn’t a good mix! We eventually found a larger car at another office on route to another place we were staying so went and swapped it over. The new car was a lesser make/model but we just wanted something comfortable at that point. The staff there said they don’t get involved in any issues we’d have to go through head office.

Returned the hire car at the end of the 4 weeks and had a discussion about all the issues, again told we just needed to ring head office. Rang them and yet again no resolution and nobody calls back. The car we’d had for the last 3 weeks was significantly cheaper than the original so we wanted some money back.

Fast forward 2 months and despite emails/calls we never got anywhere so just gave up.

Until today when we get a £900 invoice for a new windscreen!!

I understand if we’d had a satisfactory car the whole time this would be our responsibility but in this case is there anything we can do?? We must of made 15 phone calls to tell them there was something wrong with the car before the crack appeared - it may have happened anyway but the fact the car was vibrating so much I’m sure contributed to that!

[johnd2]

Sounds like if you raise a small claim against them they'll either spring into action and realise they need to pay attention, or youll turn up and they won't and you'll win by default!