Be Fair, should I response for the damage?
When the car was returned to the Payless Car Rental, an inspector found a tiny crash spot on passage’s side of the windshield; it’s about 1/8 inches in diameter. I was so surprised, this looked like a rock or a hard object heavily hit on the windshield when driving on highway. But I neither drove on highway during my stay in Las Vegas, nor there was a stone or hard object hit on the windshield during my usage of the car. I then reviewed the video I took before I drove the car from the Payless Rental parking lot. I then realized that there was a white spot showing on the windshield on the video, even though it’s at night and the parking lot was so dark, but the crash was visible by freezing the video around the 28th seconds, or frame number 429.
Please check out the picture captured from the video, the crash spot was circled in red, and see attached.
The reason I took the video for the car, because Payless Car Rental gave me a heavily used car, I can see a lot of scratches or spots on the body and car from the video, so I was afraid that they will probably come after me about the car’s condition when I return the car, it then really happened; I was forced to sign and commit the damage of the car during my usage, otherwise they would not close the leasing of the car.
There was another reason I videotaped the car, I never ever video tape a rental car before. I wanted to use my own GPS system in the car, and I realized the cigarette light was not able to power up my GPS, I then asked the clerk if he could help me figure out how to use that. And he told me that the cigarette light was not functional anymore. I had a perception that they didn’t list out what were not functional or damaged, and may come after me when I return the car, and I could be easily trapped by this if I didn’t inspect it carefully. Lucky enough, I asked them for cigarette lighter, otherwise I need to response for the damage when I returned the car. I asked them for another car because the car condition was very bad, but they said, they didn’t have any compact car left, they had a big van available only. Don’t be ridiculous, there were some many compact cars on the parking lot; look at the video I took, there were so many cars around. I didn’t need a van; I attended the Consumer Electronic Show there in Las Vegas, I only need a small car for using two days in local. I reserved the compact car two weeks ago prior to my arrival in Las Vegas on Jan 9, 2008. If you didn’t have decent condition cars to rent, please don’t take my reservation then, I could book my car in the other car rental company. Such bad condition car shouldn’t be rented out to customer.
When I took this car in the Payless Car Rental parking lot, there were so many white spots on the windshield and scratches all around the body because the car was heavily beat up. It was definitely very hard to exam each white spot on windshield by eye at night (when I took the car, it was 11:30PM, and the light is very dim), and there were so many. I had videotaped the car by Canon camera, which it has a pretty good night vision video captured, you can see the crash (white spot) vividly. My conclusion is, it is not my responsibility for the damage; the crash was there before I took the car.
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