Understanding fair wear and tear

Flexible vehicle hire is the most cost-effective method of sourcing cars and vans as it provides the perfect ‘pay-on-use' solution.

Customers only pay for a small proportion of the vehicle’s wholelife costs, such as depreciation and maintenance, based on a daily or monthly calculation.

Rental providers use an expected future value for each vehicle to work out the daily cost, which includes expected deterioration from normal use. This is often referred to as ‘fair wear and tear’.

So, if you have a vehicle for a day, it should typically be returned in the same condition it was delivered. If you have a vehicle for two years, then there may be the odd mark or two.

However, when there is considerable damage, this needs to be paid for in some way, as it either must be repaired or the used price of the vehicle will have to be lowered to reflect its condition. This can lead to the customer paying additional fees on a vehicle’s return.

Reflex Vehicle Hire can help customers to avoid charges in two ways.

Firstly, our award-winning modular safety service Driive with Reflex can provide you with an overview of vehicle use and enable critical insights that prevent damage occurring.

Our telematics and dashcam technology can be used to help employees with defensive driving techniques and to identify any training needs for areas including parking or speed management.

We have recently upgraded our ground-breaking Flexicamplus combined dashcam and vehicle telematics system to double the number of data feeds that can be monitored to four.

This means the system could monitor four cameras at once, covering the front, rear and sides of a vehicle simultaneously.

Alternatively, it could power three cameras, such as front, rear and cabin, while also managing data from another device, such as the Flexinap fatigue and distraction monitoring service.

Our second method of keeping costs down is being fair on wear and tear. We focus on fairness when it comes to damage recharges that some other providers see as a revenue stream.

Through our fair excess policy, the majority of vehicles fall outside any charging structure; where fees may be incurred, we work closely with our customers as partners to look at ways to manage any costs and also reduce the likelihood of vehicles suffering chargeable damage in future.

As members of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association, our clients can be assured that we commit to the highest customer service standards and that we fully adhere to its code of conduct.

To find out more about the vehicles available from Reflex Vehicle Hire and the additional services we can provide, you can:

• Browse our online Vehicle Booking service
• Review our Driive with Reflex modular safety system
• Contact a member of our sales team

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