Dollar Rent A Car, Thrifty, Hertz Blatant lies by counter rep about Loss of Use Waiver Sanford Florida

To the Dollar employee: your rebuttal was extremely well-written and thoughtful.  I can see that you did your research to back up your claims. Particularly, you addressed the specific language that Visa uses concerning Loss of Use.  Your information has made me want to retract my complaint.

I do want to recommend that Dollar, Thrifty and Hertz present this information both on their website, and in some form (pamphlet?) in the line for the counter for every location.  Perhaps you know the proper department to inform of this recommendation. I am certainly printing this information for my travel file, in the event that I ever need to rent a vehicle again.

Many thanks!

I have been an employee of Dollar Rent A Car for almot a year, and I'd like to help clear up this issue.

Loss of Use, as defined in this industry, is a penalty levied agaisnt the renter for the loss of revenue incurred by the company when a rental vehicle is unable to be rented due to damage. Any and all time that the vehicle remains out of active fleet, the company loses money on it and passes this cost on to the renter who damaged the car. I have personally seen rental vehicles that have sustained heavy damage sit on the side of the building for weeks while they are in claims limbo. So the rental agent's assertion that you could be out several thousand dollars is actually true.

However, you claim to now know that visa pays for loss of use through your credit card benefits. Lets explore this.

Credit card collision coverage for rental cars is extremely finicky. First and foremost, they only cover what your own personal insurance doesnt cover, up to a sometimes undisclosed amount, and with a varety of exclusions. This means you would have to make 2 claims--one to your own insurance and one to visa. Your premiums for your persoanl auto insurance would undoubtedly go up. I have no idea what car you ended up with, but credit card coverage essentially excludes everything except a regular sedan or coupe. The other caveat is that they will not cover rentals that are more then 15 days long.

On the cardholder benefits brochure, visa claims they will cover 'reasonable loss of use charges substantiated by a fleet utilization log'. This means they will only pay loss of use THEY deem to be reasonable and only if the rental car company provides its logs to prove that the loss of said vehicle caused enough problems to warrant charging loss of use. Rental car companies consider these logs to be confidential and will generally not release them to third parties.

So the agent's assertion that visa will not cover loss of use is variably correct. She knows how claims are handled and beleives that visa would deny paying loss of use.

I hope this information helps!