The van we used was brand new (less than 100km on the odometer). We took great care of the car. When we returned our vehicle to the rental location, a slight scratch was noticed, and marked, and the entire car was inspected. The rental person insisted that the scratch (which officially was listed as ‘barely noticible’ by the inspector) be signed off on, and my friend agreed and wrote in at the point of signature that she did not agree that there was any damage done and disputed the claim. However, she signed it. After returning to the US, a month later, a bill came in from Amsterdam for the equivalent of $750 US!! The bill was in Dutch, contained some photocopied photographs that you could not see anything in, and one had a smashed grill. The grill was perfect when inspected, and only the scratch was listed, but this bill demanded repair for the grill. It was nearly impossible to deal with the company directly, and we had to fill out and affadavit describing the dispute, contact legal aid, contact the credit card company, and fraud protection. We felt that they were trying to pull one over on us and were at no time helpful. They would not even send the original digital photos to us.

Ultimately, the credit card’s fraud protection service took over and resolved the issue. Likely they just paid the company, unfortunately, we never found out what they did. So the moral of the story is, take a camera with you and photograph every aspect of the car, with the inspector, or with something that shows the date/time in the photo. Also, check with your credit card company’s policies regarding protection for rentals, insurance, etc. We were lucky, but the time/effort spent dealing with the issue was ridiculous.