Goats, hailstones, and supermarket car parks are some of the most expensive and unusual claims for hire car damage according to iCarhireinsurance.com, a leading provider of car hire excess insurance.

The claims, from summer 2019, include damage caused by goats climbing on a car, numerous supermarket car park bumps and scratches, and one driver being chased up the road by a large Portuguese Mountain Dog.

One in five (20%) claimed the damage was “not my fault” and over a quarter (27%) claimed for damage to the hire car when it was parked or being parked.

iCarhireinsurance.com’s Top 10 Causes of Customer Claims

  1. “I thought we would fit” – It doesn’t matter how good a driver you are, mistakes happen, and they can be costly. One customer misjudged the height of a roof of the car park causing nearly £3,000 damage – damage £2,797.
  2. “Get off my car!” – Over a thousand pounds worth of damage was caused by two goats climbing onto the roof of a car while it was parked outside a villa – damage £1,399. Damage caused by animals is quite common with one customer claiming for over three hundred pounds when their car was attacked by a large Portuguese Mountain Dog which chased the car and jumped up against the driver’s door whilst the car was moving – damage £305.
  3.  “I only wanted some bread and milk” – Supermarket car parks are one of the most common places for damage to happen, with one customer returning to their car to find it has been hit on not one, but both sides – damage £1,168.
  4. “I’ve never seen hailstones so big” – Bad weather is a cause for many claims, with the damage to one customer’s hire car’s roof and windshield, due to a heavy hailstorm, causing nearly £1,000 of damage – damage £980.
  5. “I just didn’t see it” – It is surprising how much damage is caused by objects which don’t move. One customer claimed for more than £900 of damage caused by “colliding with a rectangular plant”- damage £943.
  6. “They reversed into me” – Many claims are due to other drivers, with one customer claiming another driver reversed into his hire car causing damage to the front door, rear wing, left side door handle and rear bumper – damage £1,180.
  7. “They came out of nowhere” – It isn’t just other drivers; damage can be caused by cyclists and scooter drivers. One customer claimed over £1,000 of damage when a scooter collided with their vehicle causing damage to the lights, bumper and front wing – damage £1,167.
  8. “The sat nav told me to go down there.” Scrapes and bumps caused by sat navs directing drivers down dead ends, into narrow roads and on country lanes are all too common. This claim took the driver down an alley where the walls were so close it was almost impossible to manoeuvre the car through it – damage £276.
  9. “It was vandalised while I was at the beach.” Parked hire cars are not safe from damage, even when they’re parked in official spaces in car parks, like this claim which was keyed by a vandal along both its sides and back – damage £901.
  10. “I didn’t even know the car was damaged”. It can come as a surprise when the rental company finds damage on a returned car that the customer knew nothing about. For one claimant the rental company inspection found the hire car had three points of attempted forced entry where a thief had tried to steal the car, unbeknown to the hirer – damage £914.

Ernesto Suarez, founder and CEO of iCarhireinsurance.com said: “Whether it’s a perilous supermarket car park, hailstones the size of golf balls, or goats ‘kidding around’ on your roof, it would have been hard to predict some of the ways rental vehicles were damaged last year. However, it wouldn’t have been hard to predict that without car hire excess insurance, the hirer would have been considerably out of pocket when they returned the vehicle. It goes to show that it doesn’t matter how good a driver you are, accidents happen.”