Enterprise rental damage in France

Oct 28, 2017
My family and I are in France, and rented a car through Enterprise in Avignon, then Salon-de-Provence - long story short: they didn't have the class of car we reserved, told us to come back the next day, still didn't have the class of car, sent us on a 45-minute drive to Salon-de-Provence to get the correct class of car. When we arrived in Salon-de-Provence, there was only one employee, and he rushed us through the process. While I was doing paperwork, my husband looked the car over and took pictures and video.

Yesterday on our first fuel fill-up, my husband discovered some scratches on the bumper. We immediately looked at the photos he took, and saw that the bright sunlight resulted in a lot of reflection on the car. The scratch can be seen, but it would be easy to mistake it for a reflection of the parking lot. In the attached picture, the arrows point to two parts of the main scratch - there is a space between the two, which is exactly like current scratch on the car.

Unfortunately, the reflections make it impossible to see the additional smaller scratches below the long scratch. Reflections also result in the video being fairly worthless in that area of the car.

How should we handle this when we return the car? We know we did not scratch it, but I'm not sure our evidence is enough, and how we should approach it with the French rental employees. Appreciate any suggestions!



Neil Maley

Staff Member
Dec 27, 2014
New York
You should say nothing when you return it. Take pictures again of the car when you return it showing you returned it the same way you picked it up.

Some car rental companies don't count scratches as damage under a certain size. You just need to show pick up and drop off pics IF they open a damage claim. The only thing you didn't do at pickup was make them mark the damage in your copy. But keep those pictures for at least 6 months after you return it.