Florida newspaper story nothing to surprising

[EX24VV'er]

In the end, Enterprise Rent-A-Car practices damage control

Q Last year I traveled from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, where I rented a Kia from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. A quick walk around the vehicle revealed no damage to the rental. The next day I returned the car to the local Enterprise agency in Lancaster, Calif.

Another walk-around inspection of the car was done personally by the manager, which had never happened to me before. He claimed there was a dent in the door. He said he would have to file an accident report. But I said there had been no accident and I could not see a dent.

The manager then asked another employee to come out for a second opinion. She knelt at the front bumper and looked down the fender line. She said she could see an indentation by the door handle of the driver's- side door.

I then offered to have the car inspected by an auto body shop just down the street. My request was denied. I asked two customers to come out and look at the car for another opinion. They agreed that there was no damage or dent in the door.

The manager made no comment. Instead, he filled out an accident report and requested I sign it. I declined. I had pictures taken of the car but I am not a professional photographer, and they only showed the car door.

In the following weeks I received a claim of $476 from Enterprise for damages and "repainting" of the door. I declined to pay and called and wrote the claims office indicating there was no dent or damage and I had witnesses to verify this fact.

Much to my surprise the Enterprise Claims office then changed the damage estimate bill from $476 to $510, which exceeded my insurance deductible. They then reported to my insurance company, claiming I had an accident with their car.

I filed a fraud complaint with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. In response, Enterprise threatened to notify the State Motor Vehicles Department that I had an unreported accident with their vehicle, filed a credit report for lack of payment, and turned my case over to a collection agency.

My insurance company recommended that I pay the claim rather than fight it. So I did. But I feel as if Enterprise has taken advantage of me.

-- Roger Hughes, Minneapolis

[Former24FFer]

Typical Enterprise practice

[ExLossControl]

Sounds like fraud to me.

[TravelingAshley]

Does not surprise me. Here's another example.

A group of us (ERAC employees) were traveling to a concert in ERAC automobiles. There was bumper to bumper traffic. We were slightly hit from behind...when I say slightly I mean I didn't even feel it but my manager who was driving did. He got all huffy stomped out of the car and said there was damage to the back of the car. He got the kids info so he could put in a claim and we continued on to the concert. We parked at the concert and he continued to tell the story to the others in the group that were a couple cars ahead. I finally walked behind the car to see the damage and was surprised to see some scuffed paint and I quickly piped up and said that was there before we left for the concert. I know because I followed you in this car and remember seeing it. So that kid did no damage to car. He looked soooo pissed at me. You could see he knew the damage was already there but wanted this poor kids insurance to pick it up instead of ERAC. If it goes through ERAC to get fixed it comes out of the Managers profit. Go Vermont Group! Great ethics as always.

So what probably happened in your situation was they knew the ding was there. They did the walk through when you rented it, hoping you wouldn't see it and avoided writing it down. Then they knew when it came back they could nail you with it. This is without a doubt fraud. More people like you need to expose this fraud. They have done it countless times and will continue unless more of these cases are brought forward. Good luck!! Keep us posted.

[Jeahho]

Originally Posted by TravelingAshley

This is without a doubt fraud.

I am not trying to single you out, but the above quote is typical of this board. You are stating an opinion, which is obviously tainted by your dislike of the company, as fact. How in the world is this 'without a doubt' a fraud?

Anyway, this is from a news story of sorts, not from someone posting to this site.

Here is what I would wager happened though! The car did have a dent. There was no damage report written on the dent previously. There was no dent marked on the contract. The manager at the receiving branch followed the rules and wrote a damage report, which is much better than eating the damage as an OX down the road. Also, the damage report is written on the sending offices books, so when the money is refunded it hits the office that sent the car rather than the office receiving the car.

I would highly recommend to anyone doing a one way rental to choose a company that specializes in that sort of thing. Due to the responsibility the manager of an office has toward the condition of her cars, she is somewhat likely to do something shady when it comes time to send a car to another branch. That something shady would include sending a car with inconspicuous damage in the hopes the receiving branch won't notice it, or on the receiving branches part the shadiness would include writing damage reports on 'normal wear and tear' due to the difficult task of assessing repair costs at a glance. Either way, I would say your chances of ending up with a damage claim filed against you are significantly higher if you are dropping a car at a branch other than the one you rented from.

My favorite part of that article was when the person called some other customers out to look at it. Where in the world does someone grow up that they drag total strangers into a dispute of that nature? I absolutely love not having to deal with that sort of madness any longer.

[TravelingAshley]

Hmmm...interesting. I have to say that what you described is infact fraud, believe it or not. So it is better to charge an innocent customer than "eating the damage"? It is fraud, sorry.

My story that I brought up was just an example of an attempt at fraud that I saw with my own eyes as an employee. Just wanted to state that it does happen all the time at ERAC. This is one of the big reasons I couldn't live with myself while I worked there. I just couldn't cheat the customer and I couldn't deal with upper management like you trying to shove it down my throat that fraud was the right thing to do.

[TravelingAshley]

And one thing I forgot to mention, they didn't call out a customer honey - it was another employee.

The branches that I worked at didn't try to fuck over a customer for damage. Usually if undocumented damage was discovered, we'd check the history for the car and see if a recent renter had damage waiver and do a dx to that. It would still hit us, but not as bad, and some unsuspecting customer wouldn't get stuck with the responsibility. I heard about some managers in my old group pulling shady shit like the thing mentioned by traveling ashley, but I was fortunate enough to not be directly apart of that.

As for determining damage, alot also depends on the persoanlity of the employee. I saw some employees call out the customer on some really small shit that just made me roll my eyes. Some people are just anal like that and when you throw in the 'every branch for themselves' mentality of Erac, then that often led to some stupid dx reports for some extremely minor things.

As for that customer calling out other customers to look at the damage, who cares? If the employees that a customer is dealing with are anal retentive pricks, and that will have direct influence on their decision to make you pay, I don't blame the customer for getting a few other eyes to look at the damage. I dealt with a lot of asshole customers, but if one of my employees was being a douche and making a big deal about nothing, sacrificing ESQI as a result, it wouldn't piss me off that the customer asked others to look at the car. Now if the customer was just a good old fashioned bag of monkey spunk, then that would annoy me.

The problem is, some people are better at checking in cars than others. A customer returned to me this morning, and i noticed a scratch on the upper door pillar - nothing marked on teh contract that had been checekd around by a trainee and the customer. the customer said they wouldnt have seen it as they checked around the lower part of the car. She then said that the car had been parked on a private car park. As it was, I got the employee who had checked out the vehicle to check it back in without telling him where I had seen the damage. He couldnt see it (even though it was the first thing I saw), so I let the damage go on that occassion as I couldnt be sure it had happened on the rental.

The problem is not always "shady ERAC practices" - there are many times when a customer damages the car and denies it was them (bumper scuffs, dings etc). Usually the customer will have dropped the car at a dealership or bodyshop - which is convenient as it does not give teh ERAC employee a chance to check the car in with the customer.

Bottom line is that a customer should check the car out at least as thoroughly as the ERAC employee if not more, especially if they have an excess on their policy. If the customer signs for "no damage" on a contract, then it comes back with damage, even if it is not damage caused by their driving it, but lot damage - they are liable. Personally I will try and T-cut a scratch out first, failing that will get the car repaired as cheaply as possible. We don`t all try and piss customers off to get pre existing damage repaired, and I think if it came to light people did do this, then they wouldnt be in their jobs very long

Did anyone here consider two other things?

1. The damage may have been caused on rent while the customer was not present with the vehicle? Like a parking lot ding. That happens a lot.

2. The customer is lying. They do that all the time. Since this is a stupid cust serv job, all a lying customer has to do is play the victim card.

More than likely this situation was the first scenario that got over blown.