IANAL (and never regretted it), but I think if you present evidence and the “other side” accuses you of falsifying that evidence, doesn’t the burden of proof fall on the “other side” to prove that? Regardless of who’s the plaintiff and who’s the defendant? (Lawyer? Is this correct?)
Isn’t the proper response to this question “Hail, no!” 
And yet if you have photos and the other side has nothing, the photos will win out.
Taking a picture of the car before and after is a pretty good idea.
Chris has this question with surprising regularity of late. Most of the time, pursuing the question back to the rental agency; requiring their documentation, appraisals of damage, proof that the damage was repaired, etc; are often met with the rental agency electing to drop the subject.
The speculation is that many agencies (perhaps the local franchise) is using “damage to the car you rented” and bringing to bear heavy-handed collections as an income stream.
One lesson here is to inspect the car pre-rental, note ALL damage (inside and out, down to the tiniest scratch, regardless of what the rental agent says) on the rental form; and have that form signed-off by an employee.
i rent cars on a somewhat regular basis and I sometimes wonder if I should still keep buying insurance.
After reading this thread, I think I’ll just go ahead and spend that $24.00 a day or whatever they’re charging. It seems like a cheap way to avoid a lot of problems.
Take photos with the cell phone and then immediately upload to dropbox (or some other service). Then you have independent attestation to the time the photos were taken, at least insofar as to prove that the “before” photos weren’t taken “after”.
This, 100%. They’re chasing you because so far you haven’t proven you can fight them off and to them this is a great revenue stream.
All the advice you have been given on pictures is great for next time, for this time deluge them in requests for documentation. You want the check in form, you want pictures, you want proof of repair and those repair costs (often their repair costs are conveniently just under a deductable limit). Eventually they’re either going to send you enough falsified data that you’re going to cave or they’ll have sent you enough to defend yourself in court.
If your time isn’t worth the $250 to do this go ahead and pay them this time and a few mins taking pictures will save you the next.
Is there more to this story we’re not aware of? I’ve rented cars all over the world and have never gotten hit with this scam. It seems strange that a national rental car company rented a car to you and during a period where there was no hail, accused you of having extensive hail damage to their car, demanded money, and provided zero evidence to you of said crime, then came after you directly when you insurance company told them to take a hike. I have never heard of such a thing happening. I would think one phone call to them would straighten this out . I can only assume there has been a case of plate numbers on two of their cars getting mixed up.
Nonsuch,
We’ve taken note of your concern and would like to have the opportunity to look into this for you. Please send us a detailed email to care[at]enterprise.com including the exact rental location information, your contact information, your rental agreement number and any further information regarding your experience with us.
When emailing, please list Reference Number 121011-001543 in the subject line. We look forward to hearing from you.
Respectfully,
Carol
Social Media
Enterprise Rent-A-Car
^^ Whoa, was that for real?
True, and another source of found money for the rental agency.
Looks like Enterprise is attempting to do a little damage control. It’s nice to know they “care”.
I hate pretty much all rental agencies equally. I avoid them when possible.
Roddy
Most likely, yes, it’s real. Most large companies monitor the major sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and respond to customer complaints. That’s why I never understand it when people deliberately avoid specifying the name of the company that they had problems with.
Let’s suppose that it did hail when Nonsuch had the car in his posession, and let’s suppose that it did suffer from said hail. Why would that be Nonsuch’s fault? Wouldn’t it be considered an act of god?
Agreed.
For what it’s worth, I once had an issue where a counter agent tried to scam me into paying double because I was 30 minutes late for my reservation. When I emailed National Car Corporate, they were beyond helpful— they refunded the full amount (even the part I was planning on paying), apologized profusely, and gave me an upgrade or something the next time I rented from them. They were fast to respond, too. National and Enterprise are, I believe, sister companies.
Yes, Alamo, Enterprise, and National are under ‘Enterprise Holdings’.
Wow. Thanks Enterprise Cares. I will be in touch.
If something happens in the future, a good idea is always to tweet to the company’s twitter account. They tend to react fast to stuff that’s in a fertile viral garden.
I hope you’ll let us know how this is resolved.
Was this the Budget at the Salt Lake City airport? Wait, never mind. Couple options and YMMV.
- Ask them to validate the debt and then sue them for $1000 for every violation of the FDCA.
- Ask for proof. Tell them you are recording the call and that unless they hang up they are concenting to the recording. Threaten to sue for defamation of character. Get the name of whoever calls you and tell them that you will report them personally to the authorities for extortion and conspiracy. If you are in another state tell them this and that you will report them to the FBI as well.
- Ignore them. As soon as you hear who they are on the phone hang up.
Plus SDMB gets high rankings in many Google searches. A lot of times I Google something I’ve read about on SDMB and the first Google result is the SDMB post I just read.