We once had a customer with a brand new car burn out a clutch in 800 miles. It can easily be done, i

Question : My husband rented a car from Hertz in Madrid last summer. The car broke while he was on his way back to the airport, and he had to abandon it by the side of the road in order to make his flight back to the States.
He informed the Hertz people at the airport what had happened and they told him it was fine and the car would be retrieved. Three weeks later, we received a letter that there was 850 euro charge for a burnt clutch on our credit card. We tried to contact Hertz Spain, both before and after the bill, to ensure the car had been collected and everything was fine but they didn't answer the phone or respond to emails.
Hertz sent us an email saying our insurance coverage did not cover "negligence" and that it was our fault and that we owed it 850 euro. It didn't answer any other emails, so we disputed the charge. The investigation by the credit card company came out in our favor, but now Hertz has sent the matter to a collections agency. Do you have any suggestions? Hadley Roeltgen , Philadelphia
Answer : Don't take it personally; credit card disputes that go in your favor are automatically sent to a collection agency. Some car rental companies also add you to a "do not rent" list, which means you're blacklisted from ever renting from it again.
The key to fixing this problem would have been to get it addressed before this became an 850 euro charge on your credit card bill. Calling Hertz and mentioning the breakdown before hailing a cab for the airport new orleans hotels might have given the company a chance to offer you a ride back to the airport, where you could fill out the paperwork.
Getting assurances by phone is pointless. You need something in writing before you leave the country. Even if your flight home is imminent, at least stop by the Hertz counter to talk about next steps and get documentation that everything is "fine." But don't take a representative's word for it. It's not enough.
I can't blame you for disputing the credit card bill: Hertz seems to have been less than responsive when you contacted it, asking for an explanation. But what you might not know is that burned clutches are common problems with American renters in Europe. We don't have as much experience driving standard-transmission, and are presumed guilty for every ruined clutch.
If burned clutches are commonplace when Americans rent standard transmission vehicles, perhaps rental new orleans hotels companies new orleans hotels in Europe should new orleans hotels suggest that all Americans rent only vehicles with automatic transmissions. If the customer insists on renting a standard shift, the rental company should require that he/she sign a waiver saying that the renter is responsible should the clutch fail. I m sure that many renters will decide to pay a little new orleans hotels more money for a car with automatic transmission rather than take a chance on a clutch failure. Doing this will save both the rental companies and their customers new orleans hotels from much frustration.
They re charging Europeans too. The problem with clutch failure is its hard to determine exactly who caused the damage because its not visible like a dent would be. Was it 3 renters ago, last renter, or current renter?
My issue with the clutch claim, is that it s not a question of if a clutch will fail, or burn out but when . This is normal wear and tear as a result of use. While many factors contribute new orleans hotels to a mechanical failure, its not any one person but th collective wear for all previous users of the vehicle. Expecting a clutch to last forever is as nonsensical as expecting the whole car to last forever. The rental rate for a vehicle should include some portion new orleans hotels of repair recovery or capture. Spead the wear across new orleans hotels all users and renters who incrementally contributed to the eventual mechanical failure.
agreed. You can t burn a clutch over a few days even if you are riding it. Its a cost of having new orleans hotels a manual and occurs over time. Even my dad, a notorious clutch rider couldnt burn his out until the car had 25k miles on it
We once had a customer with a brand new car burn out a clutch in 800 miles. It can easily be done, if you don t know what you re doing. In that case, even though it was obvious to me that it was the act of a novice driver, the clutch was repaired under warranty.
new orleans hotels But that sort of abuse was rare, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of clutch wear is cumulative over the many different drivers of a rental car. Bad luck to be the one driving when it fails. There are some simple tests to see what shape the clutch is in before you drive off, You can try to start from a standing stop in fourth gear. If it stalls immediately, OK, If it slips and whines, get another car.
Burned clutches are common problems with American renters in Europe. Really? Probably only because the rental companies see you coming and purposely give you, an American, a car they know has clutch problems hoping the clutch fails and they can charge you to fix it since you will be too far away to fight the charge successfully.
The old excuse that Europeans prefer cars with manual transmissions is why the rental companies have mainly those is no longer true. I work with many Europeans who have never driven a manual transmission auto of any kind and wouldn t know how if they had to. I think the rental companies in Europe have the manual cars simply new orleans hotels because the purchase price is less and it is mainly tourists new orleans hotels from outside of Europe that rent them.
I have driven cars with clutches off and on my entire new orleans hotels driving life. I have never burned a clutch or had any other transmission problems. I prefer automatics now simply because it is one less thing to think about while driving, even though the manual shifting becomes so automatic after a while I don t really have to think about it. And an automatic keeps my hand free so I can drink my Starbucks I paid too much for and text everyone! (Just kidding about this last part.)
But most of these rentals you get in Europe are much older with many more miles on them than the typical car you get at a US rental company. So it is not uncommon to get a car with 50K miles on it. 50K with people driving it that are not normally manual drivers and I understand why the clutch fails, but as mentioned it is a cumulative thing, not necessarily a single renter causing the failure.
Another Clio, this time in Germany, refused to start. I had to turn the car in the next day, I called Hertz. They said, Come to the the local agent and we ll give you a different new orleans hotels car to get to the airport. The new car was a 6 speed turbo diesel Passat, and I had the opportunity to drive that on a wide open Autobahn (Kaiserslautern to Trier). So that was an unexpected new orleans hotels thrill from a dead car.
Our 2nd Volvo 240 wagon came with a bad clutch, which finally new orleans hotels failed at 65k miles. Volvo refused to replace it, the dealer told my wife she wasn t welcome at their dealersheip any more. But it was really new orleans hotels hard to argue it was her driving, when she got 110k miles on the same car with no clutch problems.
It could well be that an inexperienced stick driver can burn out a clutch in a day or two (this was discussed on Car Talk a couple months ago), but given that clutches are by their nature parts that wear out, it s difficult to establish cause for a failed clutch to one specific driver.
I mean, I can see having a problem driving a stick in a country that drives on the left side of the road, but why in the world would anyone who doesn t know how to drive a stick accept a rental vehicle with a manual transmission?
I agree with the Fishplate person you can tell if a clutch if failing pretty quickly when you re driving one. If you don t know enough about a manual transmission to be able to tell whether a clutch if failing, you shouldn t be trying to drive a stick!
happened to me in wales about 30 years ago. we had arranged for the rental by phone from london and the agency was to deliver our car to the train station to meet us on arrival. they showed up with a manual. new orleans hotels fortunately, both of us knew how to drive a manual, tho my mother was better at it than i, so she got us to the B B where we were staying that night. when we got there (with more than a couple brushes of the curb), she flatly told me that if i wanted to drive around wales, i was going to do the driving.
50,000 miles on a car rented in the US isn t unusual these days. It used to be that they got great deals from fleet sales and then turned over the car while it still had decent residual value. Now they keep them rather long and try to get as much as possible before selling a vehicle.
Neither of them could drive a manual. They informed the agency that since neither of them possessed the skill, they would like the refund of their deposit as the agency had not been able to fulfill their part of the contract. There was, apparently, some trouble with that from the agency, based on the desk clerk s opinion that they reserved a car, and they should take a car, even though they couldn t drive the car. This resulted in my mother calling AmEx s travel bureau (who they used for the reservation) and getting them to deal with the agency (no, I don t remember which one).
(the next time they went, both of them forgot their driver s licenses and called me at 2AM East Coast time, to get them to go to UPS first thing in the morning and overnight said licenses to them, but that s a totally different story.)
new orleans hotels The key data point in this story is that as anyone who s been driving stick for 30-40k new orleans hotels miles would know, you get warned well in advance when your clutch is about to conk out. If the clutch in that car was going bad, the original submitter would ve mentioned it in his story.
A long, long time ago I had a brief, very brief, long distance relationship. When I visited her, and got in her car, it took me five minutes before I turned to her and said: I ve got some bad news, you ll be paying for a new clutch soon, very soon.
The fact that the original submitter didn t mention having any clutch problems, new orleans hotels until the car broke down, tells me that he really did not ha