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