3544quebec

I picked up a car from an off-airport location in Australia a couple of days ago. There were several identical model cars to the one I was assigned in the pokey lot but my car was parked against a wall behind 2 other cars with a row of 3 cars boxing it in on the driver side and a big structural pole on the passenger side restricting the exit. One of the attendants drove the 2 cars in front out and then I gingerly extracted my car.
Unfortunately, not gingerly enough and while concentrating on dodging the pole scraped above the driver's side rear wheel on the front bumper of the car on the other side resulting in a cantaloupe-sized full thickness paint loss on the other car and a superficial foot long scratch shallow dent above the rear wheel on my car.

Filled in an incident report and expressed my displeasure with how it had been parked/located but didn't deny culpability. The car was a difficult but doable extraction. No need to swap cars - so drove off and returned today , 2 days later. Today's agent went out and inspected the car then consulted the rental record and spoke to a superviser who had been present/inspected the car after the check-out incident. The superviser told the agent to close the record and that the damage was not the customer's (my) responsibilty.

To put it mildly I was astounded. My excess on the contract was $AU5500 and an extra $AU2750 as it would have counted as a single-vehicle accident.Now I won't feel completely confident that I have dodged a bullet here at least not until 13 yrs of credit card statements have arrived but I'm going out to buy a lottery ticket today.