No Hope In Spain

An Interesting Article from Gill Charlton :

Matt from Oxford wrote in with this interesting question.

I booked a four-day car rental from Malaga through CarJet and took out its top-up insurance for an additional $8. The local agent, Goldcar, handed over a Ford Fiesta in a dreadful condition with more than 40,000km on the clock.

After two days the clutch failed. Goldcar charged me $580 to have the car towed and to repair the clutch. No problem, I thought, because I would claim the money back through CarJet’s top-up insurance. Now CarJet says its insurance won’t cover me for mechanical failures and that it’s up to Goldcar to decide whether to refund me or not.

Goldcar says I should have taken out its own top-up insurance and then I would have been covered for an incident like this. Can you help?

Personally this sounds like a bit of a disaster for poor old Matt, and its interesting that his seemingly misguided investment has soured right in his face. In many ways I would have ‘gone postal’ if this situation had been me, well that’s me and I have a 100% success rate in not being actually told of when it comes to fines etc. It seems that actually sometimes the best type of car rental/van hire insurance one can have is thoroughly independent.

Gill’s reply is typically helpful yet slightly subtle as to how he breaks the news that there is not a lot Matt can do.

Owing to the credit crunch, car rental companies in Spain are operating smaller and older fleets. This means that cars are rented out more often and are showing their age. Signs of clutch wear often go unnoticed, and when the clutch fails, whoever is unlucky enough to be renting the car at the time gets stuck with the bill. This is not fair, but rental companies are trying it on especially with customers who have not bought their own top-up insurance.

CarJet admits that its insurance excludes mechanical damage and breakdown recovery. This should be mentioned in the policy wording but it is not. The company says that it is working with AIG, the underwriters, to include mechanical issues such as clutch breakdown and vehicle rescue in its top-up policy from early 2010.

In the meantime it is dealing with arguments over who pays for the new clutch and other mechanical failures case by case. I understand that $580 has now been refunded to your credit card. But this was done only after I got involved.

Readers who find themselves in a similar position should insist that a senior manager gets involved in negotiating a settlement as he or she will have the clout to deal with the local rental company.

So basically unless you have the backing of someone in the position such as Gill, there is not going to be much hope.