Do I still need to take photos of my rental car?
When Matt Murray rented an Audi A4 in Tampa recently, the lot already had at least four cameras recording the car as it rolled out the gate. An attendant assured him he did not need to take his own photos. He took them anyway, and then started to wonder: in an age of automated inspections, does a renter still need to document the car at all? It is a fair question, because the industry is changing fast. Car rental companies are rolling out AI-powered imaging systems that photograph a vehicle before and after every rental and compare the two sets side by side to flag new damage, with automated systems arriving at roughly 100 large U.S. airport locations. The promise is fewer disputes and the right renter billed for the right ding. The worry, as one industry expert puts it, is that it is too early to tell whether this protects renters or simply becomes a new source of revenue for rental agencies. Damage claims can already stack repair costs on top of service fees and loss-of-use charges, and rental companies do not always get it right.
