Complaint Review: Enterprise Rent-A-Car - Internet

I worked for Enteprise for 4 years and I just read this report and the rebuttal and have a few things to add. 1st, you chose your insurance deductible. Most people have a much lower deductible ($250-$500), so in an attempt to lower your premium, you had to have purposly chose a deductible. Just like if you had filed a claim on your own personal car, you have to pay that on an Enterprise vehicle too. The only difference is, that when it is your personal car you pay it to the body shop and they DO NOT give you back your car until you pay it. As to Enterprise harassing you for two years about payment...I doubt it is Enterprise calling you, but a collection agency. We typically send that sort of thing off after 90 days of non-payment. It doesnt sound like you are questioning the accident itself, but the fact that you have to pay $1000 and you are calling fraud because you dont want to pay it...but the thing is that you signed not only one document saying you would pay that....but most likely 3! (the rental contract, the accident report, and your insurance policy) I would question who is at fault for fraud personally.

I'm going to quote what you said and respond to questions/concerns: "In August of 2006 my wife was in a vehicle accident." First of all, I'm sorry to hear about the accident. Never fun for anyone. "The person who caused the accident had their insurance company give us a rental vehicle from Enterprise." Now I'm speaking from policies in my region and how insurance companies deal by us, so I will admit I could be wrong: GENERALLY speaking, the other party insurance will not IMMEDIATELY pay for YOUR rental car. Your insurance company, if it's in your policy, will pay for the rental car for X amount of days or X amount of dollars and then go after the other party's insurance based on fault to recoup those funds. "The first car, an older model unknown year Ford Taurus,...." We do not rent cars older than a few years, so realistically it was between 1 and 4 years old. "....was given to her had about 1/4 of a tank of gas, filthy, and stunk of rotten milk." I don't understand your concern with gas... you just have to return it where it was delivered to you. You would spent equally as much if you received it full. Maybe just the hassle of having to fill up sooner than later? As far as it being dirty and smelly, this is something customers generally notice before pulling off our lots after the car has had a "trunk-to-trunk" inspection by one of our employees. If it wasn't satisfactory, you want to tell us BEFORE you leave. Customers initial on our contracts that they accept the quality of the vehicle and that they have inspected it. "After my wife had signed the rental agreement and had taken the vehicle to work she called and complained about the condition of the rental vehicle to Enterprise. A short while later they came by her work and delivered a 2006 HHR." EXACTLY WHAT WE WOULD DO. Do you know of another company that would do such a thing? I think most would say this is pretty good customer service. You had a problem, you asked for a solution, and we delivered it to you with no problems it seems. "She asked them if she needed to sign for that vehicle and they told her not to worry about it." Okay, now we come to a crossroads. Either one of two things has happened: A) That's not true and she did in fact initial that she reviewed the new HHR for damages, or B) the Enterprise employee really did screw up by not having her initial the contract on the replacement vehicle's condition. The only way anyone reading this story on the internet could be swayed either way is to see an actual copy of the contract, so I think it's fair to say people should generally ignore this statement, because it's just one word against another right now. I can tell you for sure, just dropping off keys without reviewing the replacement car's condition is NOT our policy at all. "Now why they didn't offer her insurance on that brand new vehicle is unbeknownst to me but they did not offer it to her and they never had her sign for that vehicle." When we swap out cars, the only thing on the original rental agreement that changes is the car's information -- the unit #, the license plate, the description of the car, and if applicable, the daily rate of that sized vehicle. Sometimes, especially in a case like this where you might have gotten a dirty car, we might not change the rate unless it was less (eg. free upgrade). So to summarize, the protection products (not "insurance".. we don't sell that) would not have changed. If you declined them on the original vehicle, they're still declined. If you accepted, they're still accepted. If you needed to change that, you would have to start a new rental contract. It is not something that would be even talked about during a swap, because the protection products are not for that specific original car, they're for that rental agreement. Understand the difference (not trying to sound snotty just so you know, lol)? "Now is it just me or is it an upgrade from a Ford Taurus to a brand new HHR? If so, then what about the contract that was originally signed? Would it not have to be changed seeing as that all the info was changed about the condition, make and model of the car? They just gave her the keys and took off." Yes, it's exactly an upgrade. We did that as a courtesy to you and a "sorry". That's good customer service. And no, like I stated above, the only parts that would have been changed on the contract were the make, model, unit # (which by the way, is how Enterprise identifies cars, rather than license plates), license plate and condition. Once again, they shouldn't have just taken off, your wife should have initialed next to the "replacement vehicle condition" box. We've already gone through that either that really didn't happen or the truth is muddy. "Well she was in an accident in that vehicle and she was found to be at fault." Stop there. So if you took our "Damage Waiver", or "DW" with the original vehicle, which you obviously didn't because you state "We contacted our insurance company and they paid off the damages to the vehicle.", then guess what -- you wouldn't have had to even contact your insurance company. The DW does exactly what it says and waives you of any damage to or theft of our cars, REGARDLESS OF FAULT. So essentially what I'm saying is that for roughly $10 to $20 per day, you could have totaled our vehicle (pending you didn't break any laws), it could have completely 100% been her fault, and all you wouldn't have had to pay any deductibles, we wouldn't have contacted your insurance company, and your premiums wouldn't have gone up. True, our DW is an OPTIONAL protection product. It is NOT insurance. But the value of what it does provide shows in situations like this one. You WANT to take DW if given the opportunity. "Since Aug 2006 though we have been receiving phone calls 2 or 3 times a week from enterprise claiming we owe them $1000 for the deductible." According to the submission details, you submitted this in December of 2007. So Enterprise has been calling you for 1 year 4 months? Unfortunately, I don't buy it. Reason one is that if you don't have our Damage Waiver, we take the FULL deductible right when you report the accident of our car to us. We don't wait at all. We use the form of payment you've given us when you took "possesion" of our rental car. YOU CAN'T RENT OUR CARS without an acceptable form of payment for this reason -- so that if you DO get into an accident in our cars WITHOUT the DW protection, we can immediately get your deductible. Now, we take the FULL amount, because at that time, we don't know the exact cost, obviously. If you have a $1000 deductible and the repairs cost $200, after our car has been repaired, you would receive a refund from us for $800. It's not anything shady, that's just how we work as an industry. Hertz, Avis, etc, they're all doing it the exact same way. A pain in the butt? Absolutely. What can you do to protect yourself? Pay the $10 to $20 a day (it varies region to region) for Damage Waiver. "They have threatened to put it on our credit report and take legal action." Again, I don't think it this is true because we would have had that deductible instantly. If it is true, why would we not do this? You owe us money! We're a for-profit company. If we let things like this go, do you know the amount of money we would lose?? It does stink for you, but unfortunately you declined our protection plan knowing full well that you were running this risk. Sorry. "I think that is a load because they never offered us the insurance on that vehicle, we never signed a contract with that vehicle on it and therefore should not be held responsible for the damages to it." Once again, you WERE offered PROTECTION (NOT "insurance") for the length of the rental contract. It transfers to a new vehicle if we swap you out. You obviously declined it on the Taurus, so that carries over to the HHR. If you were nervous about that, YOU should have said something. The contract is completely legal and transfers happen everyday, so unfortunately, you are responsible. "Thats what contracts are for and every vehicle i have ever rented to include ones i returned for less than optimal conditioning of the vehicle, i had to resign a new contract." If you had to resign a new contract when swapping vehicles, it wasn't with our company. Again, you only have to initial the space on the original contract's "replacement vehicle condition" box. Once you do that, you're good to go. The hassle of a brand new contract is not there, time is saved, and usually you're upgraded for free. "We told our insurance company a long time ago about this and they don't worry about it everything was paid for. They never told us about a deductible that had to be paid and now we have some collection agency calling us. We told them we weren't going to pay and now here we sit probably getting ready to either go to court or whatever else they can think of." I can't evaluate your insurance policy, nor can anyone from Enterprise unfortunately. If you're insurance company is telling you everything is okay, they're not being truthful. As for them not telling you that you had to pay the deductible... that's kind of the definition of a deductible. If you didn't understand that when you signed your insurance policy with your insurance company, that's between you and your insurance company and not Enterprise. Unfortunately, we (Eprise) look like the bad guys because we're trying to collect on a $1000 debt. If you want to avoid credit problems, the hassles of court battles, etc, I would seriously consider paying Enterprise. It will absolutely make the phone calls stop, you'll be in the clear to rent from Enterprise if you so choose to do so, and your credit will be safe. Until that point comes, I can guarentee you we're going to try to recoup our lost $1000. Bottomline here, especially for you internet readers, make sure you understand how your insurance policy works when renting a car, whether it's from Enterprise, Hertz, whoever. Protect yourself, and if you can, spend the extra money on protection products like our Damage Waiver to protect yourselves from messes like this. For a week's worth of DW, it probably would have cost this family $200. I'm not trying to say that's not a small amount of money, but when you compare that to the $1000 deductible that's automatically laid out as soon as you damage our cars, whether it's a small puncture or a total loss of the car, it pays to have DW.