Renting a car? Here’s how to avoid being charged for damages you didn’t cause

Going on a family vacation or traveling for business in some far-off destination usually requires a flight and then a car rental to get around. However, the cost of renting a car has spiked in the years since the covid-19 pandemic, up 35% according to Nerd Wallet.

To make matters worse, companies like Hertz are rolling out artificial intelligence to spot even the smallest of dings, and sending customers bills in the hundreds of dollars for repairs and administration fees. But sometimes, customers find that they are getting surprise bills for damage that they know for sure wasn’t their fault.

How to protect yourself from surprise damage bills on your rental car

Surprise bills for damage on a rental car that wasn’t your fault is not a new phenomenon. The internet is full of people complaining about this happening to them going back years.

As this writer was told a long time ago, be it a hotel room, apartment, car rental, whatever you may be renting, give it a good inspection before you use it. Should you find anything that looks suspicious that might incur a bill for repairs, point it out straightaway.

However, even those who follow that advice can get dinged with an unexpected bill for damage that they had nothing to do with as John Berns shared with Scripps News. He recently rented a car for a beach trip and the first thing he did when he picked up the rental car was turn on the radio. It didn’t work.

Berns did as you should and made the issue known to the lot attendant for the unnmaed rental car company. They just nodded and sent him on his way. Upon returning the car, he mentioned the faulty radio again, adding that it had been that way all week.

What did he get? “No response, a thank you and that’s it,” Berns told Scripps. Except two months later he was hit with a $200 charge to his credit card to fix the broken radio.

While Berns told his wife that he wasn’t going to pay for the damage, saying “I didn’t break that radio!” his credit card had already taken the money from his account. Furthermore, he had no proof that he wasn’t the one responsible for the damage besides his word.

“$200 is a lot of money. You work hard for your money; you don’t want to just give it away,” Berns said. From now on he says that he is going to record a video walkthrough of any rental car he hires in the future and document even the smallest of issues.

What to do if you get billed for damage to a rental car that you didn’t cause

Besides doing a thorough inspection of the rental car with a representative from the company before taking it off the lot, Melanie McGovern with the Better Business Bureau has some other recommendations to avoid unwanted damage fees.

“Take pictures, make sure they’re notating things in the contract before you sign anything,” she advised. “If you do have a dispute, you can go back to that contract and say, here is the notation that the radio didn’t work.”

In the event that you are charged for any damages that you didn’t cause, she recommends first attempting to resolve the issue with the rental car company. If they won’t budge, she advises filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and contacting your credit card company. And be sure to keep all receipts.

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