It must be nearly twenty years ago that we hired a car from a little company operating from a small shop front in Majorca. The things was - there was something familiar about it and a few hours into the first day It came back as a flash back to a program seen on TV a year or two earlier.
It was actually the front of our hotel and parking the car that triggered this off - because there had been a shot of a man running in out of the darkness, kicking the cars door in and then running off.
It had been a scam that more than a few people had been caught in and it turned out the BIL of the car hire proprietor used to kick the doors of the hire cars in and then the hirer was brought before the local Court a few days later to a massive claim for damages.
Some people managed to cancel their holiday and fly out before the court date - but in the end it was all caught on camera and put on UK TV. (anyone remember)
Anyway, regarding our hire of the car and remembering all of this. We took to hiding the car at night in the car park of a hotel half a mile away and only presented it back to them as the very hour the contract expired - which was 9.00AM the day of departure.
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Less exotic but the local branch of a National Rental Company "tried harder" to get money out of my pocket.
Returned a hire car and the tank was full - Credit Card payment taken included 40+ litres of unleaded.................Easily defeated their billing - tank on held 38 litres.
Since then I have been chased for missing spare alloy, damaged tyres, cigarette burns...........I have always won the argument and never paid the excessive claims.
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what abouts tales of people renting a car and then swapping the wheels , engine blah blah onto thier high milage wreck lol
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The biggest scam, usually abroad, is this "pay up front for a tank of fuel and no refund". An economical diesel hired for a short period will use only a fraction of the fuel in the tank.
I sort of got my own back last time, when I clipped one of those mega-high kerbs you find on the Costa Del Sol and left a bleb on the tyre wall that nobody noticed. Not deliberate, mind you but it sort of gave me a feeling of payback.
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Many years ago I worked with someone who had worked at Heathrow some years before that. He told me that there was a scam going on then whereby the car that was hired was in fact a car which had been parked in the long term car park while the owner was abroad.
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Maybe ten or so years ago a dodgy neighbour had a white Transit van.
One day a hire van appeared in his driveway.
Couple of days his white van suddenly had various blue parts, wings, bonnet, doors etc
Van then disappeared for a few days and returned painted Burgundy
A week later it got a personal plate to finish the transformation..
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