Free Traffic Legal Advice

This was suggested in legal beagles forum where I have made the post too.

a) Make a Formal Complaint to the rental company, follow the complaints procedure on their website.
When making your points, number them and use sections. Explain what's happened, why it's wrong and
what you want them to do.

You have two issues, the alleged damage to the rental vehicle and the poor customer service received by
you, i.e. she was pressurised and bullied into signing documents etc.

Although they will have Terms and Conditions, they may be 'unfair', only a Court can state they are
'unfair'.

b) Send them a Subject Access Request, they have 30 days to respond (specify CCTV footage).

https://legalbeagles.info/library/gu...ccess-request/

Make sure you get Proof of Postage.

c) Notify your bank that an attempt might be made to debit funds from your account.
Then if they do somehow succeed, you can inform the bank that payment should
of been blocked.

Did you take any photos of the car (and those areas) before your hire period?

The photos you have shown us seem to contain damage that wouldn't require "crawling around the car" on your knees to spot, so if you took photos beforehand if you're lucky this damage might be visible in some of them...

I didn't take any photos at all prior to renting. In the past, whenever renting in europe, I always did. Have no idea how I failed to do this time.... Was it element of trust having rented from them in the past and not expecting this practise to happen in UK, not sure.

I know the photos are not the best and hard to say. But the damage was impossible to see from standing up level. Missus had to squat down to take the picture of the bumper as it is bottom of the bumper. The bumper itself is angled and the bottom of it even more angled towards underneath the car.

Hi All,
Hopefully someone will be able to offer some advice of the best course of action to do in my situation.

 Left my car in garage on Saturday. Unfortunately, we really needed a car, so decided to rent one. As Enterprise was closing for the weekend, I have turned to a local car rental company which I have used in the past when rented their vans on few occasions. As I had no issues in the past, I did not expect to have any this time either. How wrong I was…

My missus and I went to their office, gave all the required paperwork, paid money for the rent and additional driver, also left a £250 deposit. They also said there is a £1,000 excess should I get involved in an accident.

At no time was I offered any additional insurance to minimise the excess.

Once the payment was completed, car rental employee went outside with us to do the vehicle inspection. We walked around the car, made notes of scraped alloys and scraped mirror covers but there was no other visible damage to the car. Signed the paperwork and off we went.
As I was doing a day shift on Wednesday, my missus went to drop the car and then to pick up our car from the garage. On arrival to rental place she went to the office and same rental employee came out to check the car. Within a minute alarm bells started ringing as this time he started crawling around the car on his knees checking the damage underneath the car. Started from the back of the car , went round and within a minute or two, as if magic, he shouted out – oh, this wasn’t here before!” Missus was perplexed as there was no damage seen from the standing position and she asked what is he talking about. Turns out there is some sort of damage to the underneath of the front bumper. Not only that! He then claimed that it is clear and obvious that the whole bumper is dislodged from it’s position.

The employee then went back to the office and said to missus that we owe them £1,000 excess. Missus phoned me in tears explaining me what has happened. I phoned the office and recognised by voice the same guy that gave me a car. He would not agree that he has done a different check than the one when we picked up a car. He claimed he was checking underneath the car first time as how otherwise he would have spotted the damage to alloys.

Eventually he passed a phone to his manager who was not budging at all. I told her in no certain terms that we are not going to be scammed and I will seek solicitors help, will tell the story on their social media too and will not pay the £1,000 excess as we do not agree with a damage and finished the phone call.

I then phoned my missus who started telling me that they keep giving her some forms to sign but she does not know what she is countersigning. She put me on loudspeaker and I could her the manager telling her this is the paperwork to acknowledge that car is being returned to the office as without signed paperwork they cannot update the system that car has been returned.

I asked my missus to write ‘’Do not agree with any damage’’ before leaving a signature which she did. My missus later told me that as she did that, manager furiously grabbed papers from her hands, so missus could not finish writing on the second form, ripped the copy for her and shouted that we have your husbands account details, and you will pay for this.

When I got back home I looked at the form which was a vehicle return form. But what they didn’t tell my missus that in the middle of the form they wrote that customer acknowledges and accepts the damage done to the front bumper. (exact wording to be updated when I get back home tonight, writing this at work).

I will also show pictures of the damage that they found.

It really bugs me that I have put my faith in them from my previous times and they are trying to play us like that. Thinking to the past I am 100% sure they have not offered any additional premium insurance to cover excess if anything would happen. Everything is so fishy about this as I know we haven't done any damage to the car, we were so, so careful with it.

I am bit lost at this moment. They have my bank details but there is no £1,000 in there so they can’t take money from there. However I want to deal with this matter that I would have no issues in the longer run. I was thinking to raise an issue with the police and then request a copy of CCTV footage which would clearly show how differently vehicle was checked on both occasions. Is there anything else that I could currently do? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

https://ibb.co/CsvYwf4q
https://ibb.co/mr5NgGXq
https://ibb.co/DPMXpVxC
https://ibb.co/RpG13hwG

I took a picture of the car number plate. It looks similar writing but the screws are in different position than the ones in the picture? Or is it just me imagining things?

https://ibb.co/Q36wZ9PL

imgur does not work in UK  since 30th September

Thank you. So the car is Hire Purchased and the friend is registered keeper (the pcn arrived on registered keeper name too).

Vehicle registration is BL17NBJ and PCN number is EF99196898

Thank you

Only posting this in case anyone else would have same issue in the future

I made a mistake by downloading the form and only then filling the information. That's what caused the text limit in D1 section.  It was Adobe Reader problem on Mac. I could not use a text box either as was getting a message that this is adobe premium function.

However, once I opened the N180 on Safari, I was able to fill the D1 section without any text limit. Once the form was filled, I could download and send it to all of required parties including copy to myself in same email.

So the court N180 paper version arrived. I have started filling it and the problem I ran into was that D1 would not allow me to type the full advised text....

It only fits in the following - ''I wish to question the Claimant about their evidence at a hearing in person and to expose omissions and any misleading or incorrect evidence or assertions.
Given the Claimant is a firm who complete cut & paste parking case paperwork for a living, having this case heard solely on papers would appear to put the Claimant at an unfair advantage, especially as they would no doubt prefer the Defendant not to have the opportunity to expose the issues in the Claimants template submissions or speak as the only t''....

Didn't think that D1 would have a limited text availability. Unless it is my Adobe that plays up. 

So since I have submitted suggested defence I have received an email from dcb legal stating that they will take the matter further. They say that they have filed N180 - direct questionnaire with the court.

I am now waiting for further documents from the court or mediation (?) .

What surprised me was Section F of their N18. I coy what it said -

F. About the hearing
Hearing venue
F1
At which County Court hearing centre would you prefer the small claims hearing to take place and why?

Claimant's home court

What would court decide to do if I would ask for the hearing to take place at my home court?

There’s a link to the email and N180

https://imgur.com/a/bI2LYPM