just a bit of advise on renting any car

[Grumpy]

I don,t care who you rent from, most places will try hard to sell you insurance on the car you rent and the cost per day may seem rather high. C.Y.A .
your obviously not forced to buy that insurance but its frequently a good idea,
simply because the rental place can and have been known too, claim your car was damaged during the time you rented it,even if it was previously damaged before you took posession or damaged after you returned it!and they will not only bill your personal car insurance, they will claim all repair and labor costs, to get the car you rented ready for resale or return to the rental fleet! reguardless of when the damage was caused or who did it if they get the option, to bill rather than absorb the cost.
its almost mandatory that you take the time and effort to take 6-8 pictures of the cars interior and exterior before you take it off the lot and as it is when its returned and have the guys at the rental place do a walk around with you before and after you take posession of the car, and have them sign off on the pictures and contract paper work plus get thier bussines card and take the guy doing the walk arounds picture.

yeah! I know thats a good deal of extra work! but not doing it can and occasionally will come back to bite you in the ass financially if you don,t !

Keep in mind theres hundreds of stories of guys returning cars in good condition, and getting billed a week or so later for extensive repairs for damage they neither caused or ever saw on the car!

buying the suggested insurance on the car tends to limit but not totally prevent this financial risk. (yes its almost a SCAM!, but they get hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra revenue, to pay for up-keep and repairs and off set depreciation on the cars doing that)

no I have not had this issue happen to me personally, but Ive generally bought the full insurance to aviod the potential problem, figuring the extra cost was an anoying but near mandatory expense, after hearing numerious problems of a similar nature from other people, in the past!

 

[Grumpy]

I know of one neighbor that was billed for a paint job on a truck he rented when the dealership rental agency claimed the truck was extensively keyed and the tail gate was missing, luckily he had taken clear pictures, proving the damage must have happened after the trucks return.
I know of one local guy that got billed several hundred dollars for replacement tail lights that were smashed on the car he rented, and he swears the car was returned in perfect condition, but he failed to take before and after pictures and get a walk-around and sign off on the contract!

 

[Grumpy]

theres an old story about two famous , and rather drunk, race car drivers that were having an argument concerning if one of their race cars lights, had remained on after one of them had spun out , at some famous track, like le mans or seabring, and had their race car skid into and submerge in a race track bordering canal, or lake.
too settle the resulting bet, they had a buddy rent a car, insure it to the max and then to settle the argument one of them drove the car into the hotel pool.......yes the lights remained on for several minutes.