Originally Posted by
me4tux
Thanks for your reply. We just arrived home.
We will file a report with Hertz and the Chase report tomorow.
The body shop quote was rather suspicious. He obviously knew I was from out of town.
The damage was minor, but he asked me if it was for an insurance quote, and I said yes.
Don't ask me why the Hertz employee missed it. I have no idea. Like I said, I waited at the elevators before the vehicle was driven away by the employee.
Originally Posted by
me4tux
Thanks for your reply.
I am aware of the Chase datelines. I shall file the Chase claim tomorrow when I get back into the office.
Q: Does Chase need the Hertz accident report "form"?
Truth to be told, I just don't want or have the time to deal with all the paperwork...
When the accident occurred, I did take photos and documented everything that I could.
So, the pictures have the time stamps etc. I also took photos of the area of occurrence etc.
I have everything pretty much at this point, on my smartphone.
NOTE: When I waited for the vehicle to be driven away, I guess I initially felt lucky. But, you just indicated that they may claw back at a later date.
However, they would have rented the vehicle out numerous times, so how would they assume it was my rental (with incident) past a month or so forward in time?
Even the repair estimate is overstated, it would not be THAT MUCH because insurance company is not dumb - its job is to scrutinize any claim and shoot down any unreasonable repair bill. The body shop regardless how suspicious you may feel, would not make it at $3K for a repair only a few hundreds (minor enough to not being noticed at first.) Do you, yourself, notice the damage? I assume you do, else you would not bring it to the repair shop which does not serve much of a purpose, to be honest other than give you a ballpark figure which now you feel is suspicious.
Chase / eClaims DEFINITELY needs an Accident Report / Repair Estimate to process a claim, let along settle it.
The WHOLE Reason to report the accident to the rental car company at the return, is to PROPERLY DOCUMENT the accident so there would not be any ambiguiousness / "misunderstanding" or whatever. Then with the paperwork in hand, you start the claim filing process, followed by the eventually Repair Cost estimate. The best scenario is the rental car company has the repair cost estimate at the spot, together with the pictures taken by them at return, then a charge right on the card (as in our case which you can go back to May or June 2018 to read my very detailed post), plus the Final Rental Car Agreement - these are all eClaims wanted - once submitted and they confirmed receiving everything, the next communication we got, was claim approval, which payment method we would prefer... within 7 days, reimbursement is ACHed to our bank account, for the Exact repair cost estimate Budget invoiced, on the spot of car return. The only item not reimbursed was the airport surcharge on the repair which per the benefit T&Cs is not covered anyway.
Please read your Rental Agreement T&Cs, where every rental car company would tell you, that it has the right to bill the customer on anything they discover AFTER the return, from damage to gas tank not fully refilled or whatever.
The next renter if not stupid / careless, would do a walk through before accepting the car if he has declined CDW from the rental car company - Ask yourself, would you not do a walk through inspection before taking a rental car of which you turn down optional CDW?