For some years I have been happily using Car Excess insurance when renting cars around Europe. For £60 a year it seemed like a bargain to avoid all the rip off extras that the hire car companies load on top of the prices they advertise.
The Lessons from this story are:
- Be careful that you have and keep hold of copies of receipts and contracts.
- Be careful what insurances you are choosing not to take out with the hire company, like recovery.
- The Excess insurance worked, but you need to be prepared to follow a rigorous procedure.
I normally book the car through Holiday Autos and pick out the best deal going from the list their portal produces and never take out the additional excess insurances, much to the dismay of the people on the counters.
You have to be careful, as they are always changing what your fee covers and as long as nothing goes wrong everything is OK, until the day something goes wrong.
Back in Dec 2024, I rented a car from Enterprise CH in Switzerland, a very reputable company to enjoy the opening week of the ski season. All went well until the last day. We packed the car and set off for the slopes. As we left the appt there was a bumping noise and a rumble – flat tyre.
The breakdown
Unfortunately, I had a nail through the tyre, there was no spare provided and the tyre was ripped so no chance of using the inflator kit they provided rather than a spare. So, I called Enterprise Ch to discover that I had not taken out the rescue service and I would have to pay for the call out, which would be about 100 – 150 euros. Not to worry, as I had insurance.
A local recovery garage arrived, towed the car to their depot, fitted a new tyre and we were off to the slopes with a couple of hours missed. The next day we dropped the car back to Geneva airport, no issues at the check in and no mention of the tyre damage and apparently all good.
Enterprise Car Hire
All good until we received the credit card bill. Enterprise had taken out £1000, which was the full amount of the “virtual” deposit on the credit card. There was no warning, no emails to explain, no paperwork, they just took out the money, unfortunately it was on Christmas Eve when the world was shutting down.
Repeated attempts to contact Enterprise Switzerland got me nowhere. Calls to their number just rang out and emails were all ignored. Eventually I spoke to Enterprise UK who were very helpful, found out the cost of the repairs and sent me the information. The repair bill was £450 (yes, get that, £450 for a Renault Clio tyre) but they could not explain why the £1000 had been taken and couldn’t help with a refund of the balance.
AXA Car Insurance
Time to contact AXA insurance and reclaim excess. This was all online and a long list of documentation they required. Obvious stuff like receipts, contracts, invoices and evidence of payments. None of it seemed unreasonable to be honest, they had their due diligence to follow, and it should have been straightforward.
At this point the AXA process met the Enterprise process, and I was in the middle. Checking my emails I realised I had paid Holiday Autos, so I did not have a receipt from Enterprise. You will all know that when you rent a car there are all sorts of things you sign at the desk, and they normally print off or email you confirmation of the contracts etc.
Enterprise CH processes had been so slimmed down they didn’t exist, I didn’t receive anything in paper or electronically, so I had no record of their contracts. I also don’t believe there are any people involved other than those at the airport desk – there is simply no back up.
Numerous attempts to contact Enterprise CH failed, and Enterprise UK always did their best to help (normally logging complaints on their system directly to Switzerland but they were ignored to). Digging around on their website I eventually I pulled together most of the information for the AXA claim and sent it off.
AXA allocated an agent to manage the claim, and over the next 10 weeks, AXA would ask a complicated question, I would do my best to find an answer, AXA would say “you haven’t replied we are shutting the claim”, I’d explain I had replied and around we would go again with the questions. On reflection whilst writing this blog, I am wondering if I was dealing with some sort of bot.
At one point, AXA asked for a receipt for the tyre fitting. Obviously, Enterprise CH didn’t respond, Enterprise UK said it wasn’t in their system so I had to track down the recovery garage in France, who were very helpful but pointed out they couldn’t give me the receipt because I wasn’t the customer, it was confidential. Back to AXA to explain again, and then we had the whole “you haven’t replied” saga again.
On my next trip to France, I decided to go into Geneva Airport and speak to the guys on the rental desk and try to get the information directly. This nearly worked, as the guy on the desk did explain that Enterprise CH were absolutely useless, had no back-office staff and ignore customer complaints, it seems that is their policy.
He explained that they didn’t keep any records, so there would be no copy of the invoice for the tyre and recovery, apparently, they pay the bill and throw the paperwork away.
This sounds incredible, but all the evidence was suggesting he was right. In the meantime, we had unexpectedly received a refund to our credit card of the £550 theyowed us, there was no warning, it just appeared 2 months later on the credit card bill. At least there was some good news.
Meanwhile, back at AXA they then informed me they were unhappy with a clause in the Enterprise contract and couldn’t proceed unless I addressed it, I was totally bemused at this point.
Unexpected payout
What on earth was going on at AXA, and I concluded their processes were designed to ensure they did not pay out on the insurance. They asked for a receipt that I would not expect to have access to, between Enterprise and the garage, and now they were challenging the standard contract terms – WTF.
I have to admit that at this point, I had given up hope of reclaiming the £450 for the tyre and was just grateful to have got the balance of the deposit.
Then in early April (3 months on), totally out of the blue, £450 appeared in my bank account from a cryptic source. This was rather mysterious and coincidental, as it was the exactly the amount I was owed by AXA. A couple of day later an email arrived confirming they had settled my claim in full and that they would like to have a call.
In the call, t transpired that someone had undertaken an audit of my claim and discovered that the agent I was dealing with had been “over enthusiastic”, which I took to mean was a complete idiot.
As this was my first claim on this type of insurance, one of the lessons is that if you start getting impossible questions don’t assume the person at the other end has a brain so escalate it. I might not have even been dealing with a person, it might have been a bot.
In hindsight I think AXA did OK, because they spotted their internal failure and dealt with it. I can’t say the same for Enterprise CH, who I would never ever use again.
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