A friend of mine in Los Angeles recently took off 10 days to celebrate his birthday and drive up to northern California. To do so, he rented a car and paid just under $300, including tax, for those 10 days. He rented from Enterprise. It was a nice Nissan Altima too, as I noted when he stopped to visit me for coffee on the way up.
While driving on a bad road in one of the national parks in northern California, he hit some solid underbrush and damaged a plastic panel of the car.
I asked him what happened next.
He called the rental car company and told them about it. The person who answered told him to take it to the nearest Firestone or Pep Boys. He found a Firestone nearby and took it in, where it was repaired quickly.
“How much did you have to pay?,” I asked.
“Nothing,” he answered.
READER COMMENTS
Dylan
Nov 8 2020 at 3:13pm
Is this by any chance a repost of an older blog entry? I have a feeling of deja vu reading it, like I’ve already written this reply once before. But, I’m about to do it again.
Had a similar experience in Ireland a couple of years ago. Rented a car for, IIRC, 7 EUR a day for 4 days. This was the advertised price but not the price they were used to getting. There were a number of mandatory insurance requirements that typically had to be purchased through the rental car agency. Almost all credit card rental insurance explicitly excludes Ireland, but I got lucky and my credit card was one of two U.S cards that had recently added it. I’d done my research and came prepared at the rental agency with printouts of my credit card policy and other materials that I learned they would need. The young couple in front of me in line was not nearly as prepared or lucky, and what they thought was going to be under 100 EUR rental turned out to be close to 700 EUR when they were all done. The look of shock on the rental agents face when I produced paper after paper for every fee she could think of was pretty amazing. I got the feeling that I might have been the first customer she’d ever had who actually walked out of the place with the advertised rate.
And then, for the first time in my life, I did end up damaging the car due to one of those low rock walls that are everywhere in Western Ireland, and me trying to move off the side to let a larger vehicle get by.
I’m not sure how easy the process was for your friend, for me it took a couple of weeks of back and forth emails and calls with the credit card company and the car rental agency to get all the necessary documentation, but in the end I didn’t have to pay anything.
David Henderson
Nov 8 2020 at 9:46pm
Good story.
No, it’s not a repost. The event happened less than 2 weeks ago.
Liam
Nov 8 2020 at 11:01pm
That $300 included insurance, I’m guessing?
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 9 2020 at 8:10am
It could have. I have an Enterprise account and they send me emails all the time with incredible bargains for rental cars. All the rental companies are suffering because of COVID-19 and are trying to make money any way they can.
David Henderson
Nov 9 2020 at 10:39am
He didn’t buy any additional insurance. My guess is that his own insurance covered the basics the way mine does when I rent a car.
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 9 2020 at 1:50pm
I don’t know of anyone who has car insurance without some kind of deductible. If he was self-insuring the rental car, his own policy would kick in. He would have to provide his insurance information to the repair shop.
The fact that Enterprise told him where to go implies they have a repair contract with those places and as a result there was no payment. I think your blog post is missing some critical information.
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