Rental Car Defaulters

[Citroënbender]

Curiosity. I see a reasonable number of self insured ex-rentals go through the salvage auctions, often newer low-end SUVs like the ZS. Quite a few are heavily trashed inside, yet they’re not listed as stolen-and-recovered.

Are people hiring a car using flaky documents or with no real ability to sustain the cost, and then running it until someone reels them in or it’s undriveable? How much slack do hire car companies typically give a person who’s failed to render payment as agreed?

[jaydee]

From my experience, they're often hired by drug dealers and trashed, because Police can't find out who was driving it and the owner comes up to a rental company. ANPR is useless unless it's flagged.
Then when it's not returned on time, said rental company reports it stolen, but Police won't investigate it because it's a breach of contract and hire company never gives a statement to go to Court.
So the druggy just keeps driving it until he gets bored with it, dumps it or returns it and pays the outstanding rental period and cycle starts again

[XR Martin]

I work in the industry and this is what I deal with everyday.
A lot are hired by the girlfriends of the druggie dealer, and the car is passed around. (Just like her I imagine)
Key is to reposses as soon as you think it's not coming back, and having very good recovery agents.
It's rare we have any go missing for too long.
We have no issues going to court, some police are often useless, are not interested and say it's a 'civil matter' (which is bs, its theft by deception) What they don't seem to realise or care about is the offender is usually involved in many other criminal activities at the same time.

But we do have a good rapport with various police across NSW and VIC which helps.

We recently had a car rented from Wangaratta and was in Airlie Beach, but the renter claimed was in Melbourne and was returning that day. Obviously it was BS and I organised it's repossession that day. Left her stranded 2000km from home.

Technically VIC police won't report a hire car as stolen for 28 days.
Never written off a trashed vehicle, they have always been savable.

[XR Martin]

Oh I suspect the ones written off have been on off-road excursions and there's extensive undercarriage damage.
An exhaust on a late model car could be $5k-10k, so it won't take much more to make it uneconomically viable to repair. Rims are up to $2k each also.

[Citroënbender]

If it’s not an industry secret, how do you physically achieve something like the Airlie Beach repo? Do you have a mechanical key made up locally for the towie, or does he just drag it onto the tray?

[Tonz]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

If it’s not an industry secret, how do you physically achieve something like the Airlie Beach repo? Do you have a mechanical key made up locally for the towie, or does he just drag it onto the tray?

Citroënbender looking for a sideline business?