Stop car hire cowboys

HAVE you ever had the suspicion that the extortionate fees charged at car hire collection desks are fraudulent?

You may be on to something. Our discovery that drivers are being put on the hook for supposed damage of up to £8,400 comes as Europcar is investigated for inflating the price of customer repair bills by as much as 300 pc.

That sort of overcharging would take a simple £200 windscreen job to £800. Which is bad enough.

By setting the excess (the part of the bill the customer pays) extraordinarily high, firms can hit us with even larger bills.

At the same rate of price inflation, £2,000 of chassis damage would become £8,000 . . . more than the car’s worth in some cases.

I’ve long suspected many damage claims made by car hire firms are nonsense. Many of you have told us how you couldn’t possibly have damaged a hire vehicle, as claimed, yet could not prove it.

Some believe they’ve been billed for repairs that never took place. That would explain why so many rental cars in Spain, Portugal and other holiday hotspots already show scrapes of the kind drivers always seem to get billed for.

Hire firms know the mere threat of a big bill helps sell their expensive excess waiver insurance — and will warn of an awful rigmarole if you buy one of these vital policies from any other insurer.

In Britain, car hire is regulated by Trading Standards, which is thought to have asked the Serious Fraud Office to look at Europcar’s UK activities.

But in Europe, sneaky practices are rife. So while there is no evidence of criminality by any car hire firm there, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were up to no good. It’s time for a fight-back — and we need your help.

If you’ve been billed for a scratch, dent or any damage to a hire car, ask the firm to prove it was actually repaired.

Get a breakdown of the bill and the work done. That should be enough to show if you’ve been overcharged. Then let Money Mail know, and we’ll do the rest. This is a scandal that demands urgent investigation by the authorities.

NS&I in a muddle

AS A fan of National Savings & Investments it pains me to say that its customer service has gone awry. When I telephoned last week about some old index- linked savings certificates I hold, there was no way of verifying my identity other than several security questions which didn’t apply to me.

The solution — letting staff access my credit file, of all things — made me uncomfortable. Yet, having passed the test, I was still refused information about my own account over the phone because it’s registered at an old address.

Sort it out, NS&I!

Dignity for Dawn

DAWN SMITH’s story on page 41 shows why it’s vital that all savers have the right to cash in their pensions. She has about £18,000 in savings, which she needs to adapt her home to shower and sleep properly.

Yet owing to arcane, unfair rules, she cannot take it in one go. With the election out of the way it’s time the Government and regulators halted this rank injustice.

How can they stand by as a disabled widow is denied dignity by silly red tape that’s stopping her spending her own money?

Theresa May, Philip Hammond and the rest can no longer afford to neglect vital issues at home — and making life easier for people like Dawn should be top priority.

One man who could help is head of the Financial Conduct Authority regulator, Andrew Bailey.

If he called a meeting with Treasury ministers and industry bosses, I’m sure that they could come up with a way to help pensioners in no time.

Age of reason

IF rEPOrTS of stalling life expectancy rises are true, the Government should call a halt to its state pension age review.

The mathematicians responsible for deciding when we retire always seem to be behind the curve and, given that the Government has admitted most pensioners spend their retirement in ill health, we deserve a break from bad news.