French hire car insurance question

[Ingwe]

We’ve hired a car for a month in France. Just to make shopping easier and local visits to brocantes etc.

You’re required to lodge a cheque for €1000 with the hirer (Carrefour) as well as paying the rental charge.This is to cover damage, petrol etc when you return the car. Also paid full insurance. On pick up, the spotless car was gone over with a staff member who market on a sheet any dints, chips etc.

Question is this: if the car has dints, chips etc at what point does the owner carry out repairs and who pays for this? What if, on returning the car, they find a chip or whatever, do they use your deposit to have it repaired and how do you know they won’t repair damage from previous hirers using your deposit?

Given that there were existing chips etc when we took the car, this suggests that there were no previous repairs and any chips during our rental will just be added to the inspection sheet for the next hirer. If the hire company seeks to withhold all or any of the €1000 deposit to cover repair costs, I’d want to see evidence of the repair work to check that I’ve paid for only damage whilst I was renting the car. I’m feeling slightly anxious about this. Anyone had experience of this?

 

[Dunworkin]

We hired in Spain and Checked it ourselves with the paper work that the staff member gave us. We took photos of everything and if we found items that were not on his sheet we went back to them and got them on the sheet. We also take out insurance in the UK from Chew ( £50) for the year. This allows you to hire a car without their insurance. which bumps the price up. They always try and get you to take their insurance but you just stick to your guns and say non! We got a car for a month for £150 euro for 4 weeks. Hired it from Alicante Airport, it was worth the bus ride ( 10 euro) to collect it. The quote we were getting from Benidorm was 550 euro. We have hired two like this and never had any problems when we brought them back. If we found anything after we left the depot we just emailed them. We have used the Chew insurance in Cyprus and Spain and we think we have saved £850 so far in 6 months on insurance. I got the details from this site and they have a good write up on Trust Pilot
Kind Regards
Sue