ABC News: A prominent 4WD hire company described in Queensland Parliament as "unscrupulous" and "fraudulent" has settled one of its major cases against a customer, acknowledging the man did not breach his contract and did not cause any damage to the vehicle. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-08/australian-4wd-hire-company-admits-customer-did-nothing-wrong/10387630
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Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!
50L custom fuel rack 6x20W 100/20mppt 4x26Ah gel 28L super insulated fridge TPMS 3 ARB compressors heatsink fan cooled 4L tank aftercooler Air/water OCD cleaning 4 stage car acoustic insulation.
Another thing to look out for is the deposit RIP-OFF.
I recently hired a ute from Thrifty hire in Qld.
Did the deed online. Only a 24 hour hire.
Deposit + hire fee. Online it said $500 dollars with a credit card.
Got there and because I had a debit card deposit jumped to $700.
As I understand it with a credit card you can have an almost zero balance and with a debit card you have to have the cash in the account. OK that was a nuisance if I didn't have the cash in the account.
Next thing I returned the vehicle, under the mileage allowance and no damage.
Return of deposit took seven days because of "Working Days" rule
So to sum it up, bigger deposit for a debit card and they have your deposit for upwards of five 'Working Days'
Australia wide the deposits would run into huge numbers and the company can do what the hell they like with YOUR MONEY quite legally.
Probably the same with the rest of the big players Budget Europcar Avis Hertz Etc.
Our last hire car was from a stand-alone operator - older model Camry. We were driving down the road and the front guard fell off... just dropped in the middle of the (thankfully not busy) highway. Somehow it flipped out away from the car, so was a simple matter of a trip to a shop of some sort (I went to do my own shopping) for new clips or screws or some such.
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The Mobile Madhouse: me (Rosie), him (Troy), a kelpie, a kelpie-dingo, a husky & a rainbow lorikeet.
We've done a 3-4 week fly/hire trip every year for the past 7 years. We've used Europcar, Budget & on a recent trip Thrifty.
We've never had a problem whatsoever. We hired a Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross for 25 days in Cairns recently & the $365 debited to our Visa card was credited back less than a week after handing back the car.
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Cheers Keith & Judy
Don't take life too seriously, it never ends well.
Trip Reports posted on feathersandphotos.com.au Go to Forums then Trip Reports.
Paid "scrupulous" attention to condition reports, and added anything remotely resemebling extra marks and scratches (with photos to back it up).
Have not had any "issues" with getting deposits back/extra "damages" claimed. Probably because not only are we diligent, but we're also very diligent in letting the Hire car places know how diligent we are ;)
No "pulling a swifty" on us for spurious/other people's damage...
"In the meantime a warning stay away from Australian 4WD Hire and Vitali Roesch." (Queensland MP Tim Nicholls to State Parliament in June, 2018)
Says it all, really...
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It is better to have and not need, than to need and not have...
