Damage scam
Complaint
Sean Callahan
Country: United States
My co-workers and I were in Chicago to cover a football game and we arrived at 8 am to O'Hare airport. We took a shuttle to the Thrifty Rental Car Center and immediately things got off on the wrong foot.
The front desk clerk, who was the manger told me that we'd be charged an additional amount of money for the extra hours we'd have the car for, even though I made the reservation through United Airline's website to snyc up with my car rental.
It then came time to go over the insurance and coverage they offered, and I told him my work tells us not to take the coverage, and he basically jumped on me like I was crazy not to take it. I told him I have full auto insurance and I completely understand how it works and I do not need your coverage. He then was very rude when I declined any of the other services they offered like toll tags, pre paid gas etc.
He gave me the keys to our car and said it's in "spot No. 12," which was against a fence on a busy street. No employee performed a walk around on the car with us and no employee instructed us that we needed to perform one our self and fill out a form if we saw any damage. We proceeded with our business, got in the car and left. We noticed the front of the car had a bent licence plate when we got to our hotel and the plastic grill on the front was cracked.
We thought nothing of it though, and assumed it was already known by them the car they gave us had something wrong with it. When I returned the car two days later the clerk looks at the car and asks about the damage in the front. I said that was already there when we got the car, and she asked if we filled out a damage form on it before we left. We were never instructed to do any of this and no employee ever mentioned this to us on how to fill anything out. Plus we couldn't perform a full walk around because the car was up against fence on a busy street and the side damaged was the side up against the fence.
They proceeded to have me fill out a claim form. I'm pretty upset by the whole deal because I feel like we've been taken advantage of. It was a very low rent operation and just the rudeness of the manager alone when we picked up our vehicle and the lack of communication and customer service provided was very disappointing. I'm now concerned what's going to happen next. I plan to fight to this to the fullest, because I am 100 percent positive this damage was already on the vehicle when we rented it.
My guess is somebody returned the vehicle either late the night before or very early in the morning and the damage was not noticed by the clerk, or this rude manager was setting me up to teach me a lesson for declining his insurance coverage.
The front desk clerk, who was the manger told me that we'd be charged an additional amount of money for the extra hours we'd have the car for, even though I made the reservation through United Airline's website to snyc up with my car rental.
It then came time to go over the insurance and coverage they offered, and I told him my work tells us not to take the coverage, and he basically jumped on me like I was crazy not to take it. I told him I have full auto insurance and I completely understand how it works and I do not need your coverage. He then was very rude when I declined any of the other services they offered like toll tags, pre paid gas etc.
He gave me the keys to our car and said it's in "spot No. 12," which was against a fence on a busy street. No employee performed a walk around on the car with us and no employee instructed us that we needed to perform one our self and fill out a form if we saw any damage. We proceeded with our business, got in the car and left. We noticed the front of the car had a bent licence plate when we got to our hotel and the plastic grill on the front was cracked.
We thought nothing of it though, and assumed it was already known by them the car they gave us had something wrong with it. When I returned the car two days later the clerk looks at the car and asks about the damage in the front. I said that was already there when we got the car, and she asked if we filled out a damage form on it before we left. We were never instructed to do any of this and no employee ever mentioned this to us on how to fill anything out. Plus we couldn't perform a full walk around because the car was up against fence on a busy street and the side damaged was the side up against the fence.
They proceeded to have me fill out a claim form. I'm pretty upset by the whole deal because I feel like we've been taken advantage of. It was a very low rent operation and just the rudeness of the manager alone when we picked up our vehicle and the lack of communication and customer service provided was very disappointing. I'm now concerned what's going to happen next. I plan to fight to this to the fullest, because I am 100 percent positive this damage was already on the vehicle when we rented it.
My guess is somebody returned the vehicle either late the night before or very early in the morning and the damage was not noticed by the clerk, or this rude manager was setting me up to teach me a lesson for declining his insurance coverage.
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