A woman who returned her rental car after hours was surprised to find the company later deducted $2400 from her credit card for damage she didn’t know anything about. 

The car hire firm has now been ordered to pay the money back after the woman was accused of causing the damage, but was not given a chance to defend any claim over how it happened. 

The rental company claimed the driver’s door was so damaged it couldn’t be opened after the woman returned it to the designated after-hours location — a petrol station in front of the rental car premises. 

However, the Disputes Tribunal found several flaws in the rental company’s argument, including the fact the woman appears to have got out of that side of the car when she dropped it off. 

The CCTV footage of the area did not extend to where she had parked, but when the police examined the footage of the forecourt, it did not show her exiting the car from the passenger side to refuel the car. 

In other words, “there was no damage on the driver’s door when she filled the car with petrol just prior to her parking the car,” referee Sheryl Connell said in a recently published decision. 

Connell found it was more likely than not that the woman who hired the car did not cause the damage and that she was entitled to receive a refund of the $400 withheld as a bond and the $2000 that was taken from her credit card before she was told of the damage. 

The woman, who wasn’t named in the decision, rented the car for two days over the long weekend on October 21 last year. 

The return date was a public holiday and the rental company was closed. The woman was instructed to return the vehicle to the carpark outside a petrol station in front of the rental car premises. 

The rental company’s service manager claimed that when he picked up the car on the first day back at work, the driver’s side was so badly damaged he couldn’t open the door and had to get in from the passenger side. 

The company claimed that because the car was not returned to its premises, responsibility for the car and any damage lay with the woman who hired it. 

The woman said she was instructed to return the car to the petrol station, which was a system the rental firm had used for many years. 

She was not told leaving the car at the petrol station would be at her risk or that she would remain liable for any incidents until the car was collected. 

The rental firm then claimed the woman had not returned the car at the time specified in the term sheet but parked the car at the petrol station within the 48-hour time frame that she paid for. 

Connell found the timeframe made no difference to the rental period, nor did it contribute to the damage to the car. 

She said the hirer’s delivery to the petrol station within the timeframe of her rental payment — a full 48 hours from pick up to drop off, was deemed as delivering the rental car back to the company. 

“I accept it is more likely on the balance of probability that the damage occurred sometime after she parked at the petrol station by an unknown third party,” Connell said. 

She found the woman was disadvantaged and denied the opportunity to defend her position of non-liability of the damages claim from the rental company. 

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail. 

This article was originally posted on the NZ Herald here.