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My battle to get rental car penalties refunded – Always photograph your odometer and exterior

SIXT BENZ

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In the years leading up to the pandemic, I easily accumulated 30 to 40 rentals a year. Most of them were one day rentals, some more, but almost all of them were from a couple of different rental agencies in LA. I was primarily renting from Sixt and Hertz and both were located within walking distance of my house. I’d gotten in the habit of doing a quick walk around, and since they grew to know me, I’d fallen in the bad habit of not photographing the exterior or odometer. This bad habit, like most any, came back to bite me in the long run. Here’s an example of how an after hours drop off turned into a protracted ordeal, made worse by Covid.

Always photograph the odometer

I recently rented two sets of cars from Sixt at the London Heathrow Terminal 5 branch. It’s super convenient and had been offering exceptionally attractive deals. On this past trip we had two separate rentals – the first was a bmw 3 series we landed for less than $50 a day, and the second was a Peugeot that, for some reason, was pricing at $150 for the day.

I’m not sure what was going on that specific day, but every rental was 4 or 5x what it was on any other, and we had to have a car to visit a friend near the Cotswolds. The first rental worked like clock work, we rented, we drove, we returned, all was well.

We rented the second car for a single day, drove it there and back, dropped it off after hours, and thought nothing of it. I couldn’t have put more than 200 miles on the car. Then I got the bill.

  • We rented the car at 11am
  • We returned the at 10pm
  • That’s 11 hours

a screenshot of a document

I was being charged for driving an extra 790 miles OVER the 300 miles permitted. That meant they were asserting we had driven 1100 in 11 hours. Clearly an error had occurred.

I emailed 4 times. Sixt phone numbers don’t work and the only recourse is email or, what I found out after the 4th email, you could use your profile to start a ticket.

You can create a ticket by going to Manage Bookings

a screenshot of a white backgroundThen report an issue

a screenshot of a computerThen select the issue…

a screenshot of a web pageYou’ll then receive the following ticket

a white rectangular object with black linesI was unsure how this would be resolved. I didn’t take any pictures and had no physical proof of my claim. The only thing that was on my side was the math – it was impossible to have driven that much, and clearly a mistake had occurred. After filing the ticket, within a couple of days, I received the following email:

a black background with white text

Had I failed to hear from them, I would have contacted my credit card company and asked for a stop payment to be issued on the overage charge.

Overall:

Ultimately, Sixt did the right thing and corrected the mistake, albeit it took far too much effort on my behalf. It was a good lesson for me to learn: I should always photograph the odometer and take exterior/interior pictures when renting any car. A lesson I should already know and preach to others, but had gotten lazy on doing for myself.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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2 Comments

  • Christian August 24, 2021

    Sounds dumb but I’ve never thought about doing video of the odometer before. Thanks. As an aside, was the BMW also 70 pounds on top of the rental charge? That seems kinda steep.

  • Rich August 24, 2021

    I understand videoing or photographing the exterior if there’s existing damage. Is there any point in photographing the odometer when the rental allows unlimited miles? That’s usually the case in domestic US rentals returned to the location where they were rented.

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