Completely taken in by the excess insurance

Drivalia Car Rental - www.drivalia.com
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HopeK's review of Drivalia Car Rental - www.drivalia.com

“Completely taken in by the excess insurance”

★☆☆☆☆

written by HopeK on 04/10/2015

I hired a car from Drivalia in Alicante for 2 weeks in September. I booked through Economy Car hire and paid an additional premium for Excess Reimbursement Insurance. Of course this was not recognised by Drivalia so we had to pay and extortionate amount for extra insurance. We were reassured that any problems with the car would be dealt with. Unfortunately we had a puncture doing our stay and their first reaction was to tell my husband to change the tyre! After stressful negotiation they agreed to send somebody out to change the tyre. I would never trust, recommend or book with this Company again.

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Drivalia_Car_Rental's Response to HopeK's Review

Written on: 07/10/2015

Thank you for hiring a car from Drivalia and of course for leaving your feedback.

Although here we don´t have access to your individual information I can clarify some things in general.

With regards to the insurance, if you book a low cost rate then the car comes with an excess and other exclusions which you can choose to protect with our SCDW cover. If you choose to buy insurance elsewhere you in effect cut us out of the picture because this is a contract between you and the broker or insurer. Obviously as the insurance is yours and not ours we cannot claim from it, you have to which means you have to pay for any damages or other costs to us and then later submit a claim to your company when you return home. Different companies have different levels of cover and obviously that is between you and them to deal with. This is why you have to leave a deposit with us to offer security in the event of damages.

This is why we cannot "recognise" it because this does not remove your liability to us in the event of any damage. If you purchase our own cover this is not the case as this removes all of your responsibilities directly with us. If you book direct and choose our Ultimate rate then all there are no exclusions or issues what so ever and of course no deposits.

When it comes to punctures, the normal procedure for a puncture is to put on the spare tyre. All of our cars come with either a spare or an emergency re-inflation kit and obviously fitting the spare gets you back on the road. Most clients who do get a puncture call us after they have changed the tyre to ask what to do next and in these cases we either instruct you to go to a nearby garage (at our expense if you have our cover) or we replace the car, whatever is the fastest and easiest solution.

Our SCDW cover ensures that you have no financial risk and you are never off the road for long but our aim is always to get you back up and running as fast as possible and simply changing the tyre is something most people can do and is usually much quicker than waiting for a recovery assistance.

We always look at the fastest option for the customer and the option that provides minimal fuss and most clients tell us they would rather fit a spare and then pop into a garage at their convenince.

If a car is undrivable we of course provide assistance but in general terms it is much faster for you to change a tyre than to wait for a mechanic to arrive just to do the same thing for you and this is why this option would have been suggested at first.

Kind regards
The Drivalia Team

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