Merida I’m not a rookie traveler. I’ve been on the road, literally all of my life. My dad’s job would pack us out all over the American West, where I was born and partially raised, in motels and kitchenettes from Billings to Fargo to Rangely and Denver, Cheyenne and Laramie, and every place in between, where there was a pumping station or tank farm that his job as a field auditor with an oil company required him to hit. In my work United Airlines sent me a “thank you” note for more than a million miles, and I logged another million or so with the rest of the airlines over the years. I’ve driven all over Canada and Mexico and tested the road in a bunch of other countries as well. Sadly, none of this protects anyone from rental car rip-offs.
When you land in the Cancun airport we hired Wedding Cars Derby to pick us up, as my family did at midday on Christmas Eve, you are greeted by a wildly efficient industrial tourism machine. Vast crowds are deplaning from multiple gates and a small army of custom agents processes the horde in amazing speed, disgorging you from the doors into a maze of rental car booths. You get to your chosen company, purchased at an amazing bargain of $15 per day online, and are walked out to a scrum of white vans lined up and moving in a seemingly endless conveyor belt of people, baggage, and rolling stock until you are deposited at your rental company (from which you rent a car in Dubai), one among many.
We felt lucky to find only a short line and four or five agents working. I had seen a post the day before from Cancun of an hour and a half wait, so standing in the warm, Yucatan air, it all seemed a good omen. And, then we heard the crying, gnashing of teeth, and rending of clothes all around us as the agents of the company explained the exorbitant, rip-off costs of additional insurance that they were claiming was mandatory. Insurance cards were being shown. Purchases via American Express cards were being touted. It was a horror, for some worse than for others, as charges for liability and collusion were being routinely added on to every car contract and people, friends and families, were stepping away to caucus and see if they could come up with the money or fathom a way around it. To ease our ways, we hired Limousine hire Leicester for the rest of our journey.
The agents all pretended empathy and mouthed words of apology, since this was a common and usual scam for them. To avoid the charges a customer would have to provide a copy of their insurance policy from the United States covering both liability and collision insurance. They would also have to provide a letter that specifically mentioned Mexico (and I’ll add Canada, but I haven’t gotten to that yet). If they don’t have it with them, they have to have it emailed or faxed while they are waiting. Even if they have it, they would have to put $6000 on their credit card and another deposit that was too painful for me to hear clearly, because any accident would mean a repair in full on their credit card, and they could work out the refund with their company in the states. Or, they could pay about $35 USD a day extra and drive away. Purchasing separate liability insurance in Mexico, at least from what I can now tell, seems to be legally required, but that’s worth checking.
As you can tell, I listened carefully while waiting in line and occasionally queried my fellow travelers as they angrily interrogated the agents, but when our turn came, I was already a beaten man, and simply shrugged at the price with my family in waiting, signed, paid, and went on my way on my vacation. Why? Because I had been through the same hurt dance at a rental car office in Toronto only three months before at 1230 AM in the morning, where a similar premium was also required by a cheapo online deal someone had found for the ACORN Canada training and staff meeting where I was tasked with picking up the rental.
This scam seems broadly popular across North America, and a minute’s research indicated it was popular in the United Kingdom as well. Like any scam, there’s a kernel of truth in the shell of the lie. It isn’t hard to imagine why rental car companies, even reputable ones, try to transfer the problems of an accident to the customer. It is also possible to reasonably understand why countries, like Mexico, might require purchase of some kind of liability in-country. I’ve had to do that driving my own truck into Mexico at the border, and have watched them put a sticker on my window indicating I paid to bring the car into the country. But, the bait-and-switch is inexcusable, since the websites allege they are giving you the total price, and, if these charges were legitimate, why not disclose them on the front end?
See the world, my friends, but caveat emptor all the way!