Actual costs of body repair?

[HireWoes]

I recently hired a car and managed to slightly scrape a wall. I'm worried the hire company is trying it on with the costs of the repair, though.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the damage, but here it is:
- the plastic backing of the mirror is missing a 1x2 cm piece of plastic ("gauged out" according to the hire company)
- 2 or 3 thin scratches in the paintwork of the mirror, no longer than 7 cm
- 4 or so longer scratches in the paintwork above the wheel, in an area no bigger than 10 by 50 cm

They claim the wing mirror will have to be replaced (due to the small piece of plastic missing) and the paintwork above the wheel will take six hours to fix. For these repairs, they want £571.
They kept the £200 deposit and wanted me to pay the remaining £371 on the spot. Of course I refused to pay before the work is done.

Also, they got the £571 price tag through a phone call - no one related to repairing the car had actually seen it. I'm worried that I'm being scammed.

Is £571 a normal price for these things? And can I do anything apart from inspecting the car before paying up, to see if it's actually been fixed?

[Squiggs]

Unfortunately it is a scam - but it's legal and carried out by most if not all hire & leasing companies.

What they want from you is the highest possible cost that a main dealer would charge for a no holds barred repair and/or replacement (whether they repair and/or replace or not!)
It's how they make their money.
And there's not a lot you can do about it - sorry.

The call would have been something like:
Wing mirror needs replacing - their estimator on the other end of the phone looks it up and replies '£xx'
Arch is scratched - their estimator looks it up and replies '£xxx'

The two added together equals the price you owe.
They are entitled to claim the cost of a repair done by anyone anywhere they want - whether they get it repaired or not is up to them .... It's their car!

What you should have done was got it repaired before returning it - probably have saved 50%

Edited by Squiggs on Monday 29th September 21:21

[OldBuoy]

Squiggs said:

What you should have done was got it repaired before returning it - probably have saved 50%

And paid an extra couple of days rental?

[Squiggs]

OldBuoy said:

Squiggs said:

What you should have done was got it repaired before returning it - probably have saved 50%

And paid an extra couple of days rental?

You've never come across a good Smart Repairer have you?

[7even]

Squiggs said:

What you should have done was got it repaired before returning it - probably have saved 50%

Edited by Squiggs on Monday 29th September 21:21

Perhaps even more, still not a lot of people know about smart or mobile paint repairs, but it would have been a great way of getting out of something like this.

Spread the word, hopefully it will help in the future.

[HireWoes]

Thanks for the replies - it looks like I'll definitely be paying their price. Lesson learned, I guess!

[Vette]

I often repair rental cars as we get a lot of holiday makers here and very few take out accident indemnity insurance. You also need to pay the excess indemnity otherwise you'll still get clobbered witha bill of £200!

Cheers
David

[HireWoes]

Squiggs, are you sure they don't even have to fix the damage in order to charge me for it? I was thinking of "inspecting" the car before paying, but if they can just charge me without actually doing anything that's pretty futile.

Vette said:

You also need to pay the excess indemnity otherwise you'll still get clobbered witha bill of £200!

Next time I rent a car I am taking out *all* of the insurance!

[Squiggs]

The fact is you damaged their car and they are entitled to claim the costs of a full and proper repair.
How they get it repaired, to what standard they get it repaired or whether they do actually use that payment to get it repaired is entirely up to them.

Auctions often have hire and lease cars going through them and a good many will have minor damage.
The full repair costs for the damage will have been paid for by the customer but the companies often decide to sell them on without carrying out the repairs.

[Andehh]

I wouldn't have said that's too bad?

I had someone very gently side swipe my car in the work car park causing damage you would struggle to see (unless pointed out) to the door mirror, front fender and drivers door - slight gouges and light scratches. Due to it being a new car to me, in very good condition, I wanted to get it sorted. I tracked the chap down and took it to a local repairer outside of insurance and it came to £870 for the fender, door and door mirror to be repainted, bumper slightly re-aligned, and the rear door blended in to match, 3 days worth of work in total but they gave me a full break down of cost and it all added up fairly.

This was on a BMW F10 5 Series at a local indy garage.


edit to add:

When the bodywork company asked me if it was insurance or private, I asked why there was a difference. They explained that with insurance the work is 'modules' so with insurance company a scratch 10mm sized WILL COST £XX amount, a scratch 20mm will cost £XX amount, a dent XXmm will cost £XX, a gouge XX deep will cost £XX..... etc etc etc and it is heavily controlled as to what the damage *will* cost. Privately they just inspect and quote, but it works out MUCH cheaper - chap reckoned it was about 40% the price when I asked what the insurance price to fix it all.

There is a chance the company has done this countless times before and just read off the ''modules'' that require doing - hence the price over the phone.

No doubt there will be an 'admin' fees they make a bit off and no doubt they won't be shopping round but I wouldn't go as far to say you are being scammed.

Edited by Andehh on Monday 6th October 16:46