Turo Wants Customer to Pay $35,000 After Vandals Smash His Rented Car's Windows | Hacker News Reader

Turo Wants Customer to Pay $35,000 After Vandals Smash His Rented Car's Windows

jalopnik.com

41 pointsourmandave33 comments

Turo is also a good "vehicle" for money laundering.

In my area there's multiple Chrysler 300Cs and others for rent. Kinda. They're listed at $600/day, and often booked for weeks on end.

Great idea if you're a drug dealer. Give your customer free product/cash/whatever, they "rent" your car (at no point do they actually get your car), and you send them the requisite odometer pictures at the start and end of each "rental", rinse and repeat.

Isn't it far easier to claim you're babysitting/housesitting/house cleaning/car detailing? It's not like those activities (or any other types of services, for that matter) leaves any physical evidence? If anything doing "car rentals" is going to leave more evidence, given how much of a privacy nightmare they are (they basically have an always on cell modem).

A key part of laundering is having a legitimate entity which processes the funds -- in this case, Turo.

I had a similar experience with Turo. The owner instructed us to leave the car unlocked in some parking lot. The following day they sent pictures of pot on the floor of the car; they charged me an extra $100 and handed me a lifetime ban. I was really enjoying using the app too...

Turo makes it pretty clear when you rent a car that you can choose from one of three insurance plans through them. https://help.turo.com/en_us/summary-and-cost-of-protection-p...

Most car insurance plans and credit cards don't cover peer-to-peer sharing, and Turo warns you about that too: https://help.turo.com/personal-insurance-requirements-or-gue... https://help.turo.com/insurance-or-coverage-via-a-credit-car...

(I've both hosted and rented through Turo, and always chose insurance on both sides because of these risks.)

They try to have it both ways. They want you to pay them for a coverage plan, but they also are firm that their plans are secondary to your personal auto insurance.

"In the US, any personal insurance you may have that covers damage to the host’s vehicle would kick in before your Turo protection plan"

In general, any insurance bought after another insurance plan can only cover what is not already insured by the first plan.

Anything else is actually illegal in the UK (it's a tax loophole, because you are paying for insurance (which isn't usually charged sales tax) for a risk that ends up being zero because another insurance policy ends up covering it).

But they could offer a protection plan that is not tied to your personal insurance in any way and relieves you of the burden of getting your insurance company involved at all. That's what car rental LDW plans do.

"We offer the Loss Damage Waiver so you don't have to worry or stress about driving our vehicles. The LDW isn't insurance, but it can protect you from the cost of damage to the Hertz’ car. By purchasing the LDW, you will not be responsible for any loss or damage that occurs to the car so long as you weren't using the car in a prohibited manner."

https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/productservice/index.jsp?targ...

Turo wants you to buy a protection plan from them, but then if there is a loss, the plan you just bought is not available to you until you exhaust all options and financial compensation via your own insurance carrier.

Yeah, this is a good point! I'd rather be protected than not, but it would be far better for Turo to offer primary instead of secondary insurance.

Claiming the Turo earns you is a bit in-genuine. This is a way that a lot of rental companies try to trick you into to paying for unnecessary Insurance.

I get the same warnings for rentals, despite both my insurance and credit are providing coverage.

Some Turo owners have their vehicles set to block Turo’s full-coverage insurance. It’s unclear whether this was the owner’s preference or Turo’s.

Wait, really? How does that work?

No idea, it was super annoying as a Turo customer though.

What a shit stupid company or its administrators. This story is now a news item (ABC) and also now here on HN and who knows what other social networks. The losses in business are going to be a hell of a lot bigger than the idiotic and (based on what I've read about their invoicing of this customer) fraudulent "gains" they were expecting with that $35,000.

If I were the CEO i'd fire whoever was responsible for this sleazy little idiocy and backpeddle as fast as possible publicly.

$35,000 is the cost of a high-end entirely new car - why do broken windows alone cost this much?

The chap in the comments got a 2k bill for a nail in his tire.

The whole story is even more hilarious:

> Went back and forth with Turo about how in the earth can a $25 repair for one tire turned into $2k. Asked for a detailed invoice and there was an interior detail, exterior detail, new brakes, new rotors, new tires, new wheels, and oil change on the invoice. Which then turned into a bigger back and forth with how the host said, ON THEIR APP, that hey this is only going to cost $25 and this is the only problem with the car. Then that BS invoice.

1. Install a GPS tracker on your car

2. Rent it out on turo

3. Track it down, bust out the windows

4. Explain the deal to a body shop, get kickbacks. Turo takes 20% off the top, it's a win/win/win.

I was wondering why car insurance is double what it was 2 years ago (well, also the parts shortage means it's cheaper, but very expensive still, to write off than paying for the parts and giving out a courtesy car until it can be fixed)

I heard from a person who works at one of the largest insurers around the east coast. That the only real reason they raise rates it because the amount of fraud in certain areas. It's also greed too. But their justification is the fraud in an area. They know the guy who is in collections with his loan, and has missed his last two insurance payments didn't just have a random hit and run with a stolen car in a back alley in Baltimore. They just can't prove that.

That's because they are not allowed to raise rates willy nilly. They have to have justification, so if they can find it, they will use it.

There's also the risk when more drivers start driving uninsured that the company will have to pay out even if the company the driver is at fault. Drivers are more likely to do that when the choice is between insurance and rent or as insurance goes up in general.

The article suggests that the car's owner may be fraudulently inflating damages as well.

Lend our car, pay people to cause damages, inflate damages, collect cheque.

That's just bog-standard insurance fraud.

You'll find that "collect cheque" will often be replaced with "go to prison".

They don’t. Someone is adding charges that are not the windows or whoever smashed them also hit metal

If it takes a couple of weeks to order in the new windows and get them fitted, the owner could argue that they incurred substantial losses cancelling all the rentals for the forthcoming few weeks (and probably getting a lot of 1 star reviews, that harm the business for months to come).

That'd be a hard sell. One, you'd need to show reservations for that whole time, and two, "loss of use" on Turo ("share your car when you're not using it") is a whole lot different to loss of use for Hertz, when the car's "full time job" is earning income.

(Especially since on my Audi RS 5 with OEM glass, HUD, and rear "hatch" on a sportback, the replacement cost would be $3,800.)

I don’t know where you’re g getting that number. Our mid-level car, bought 8 years ago, used was $30k.

A lot of entry level SuVs start at $35k.

It’s probably still close to 25k now 8 years later because inflation jacked up all prices 30-40%

New car prices have gone up a lot since the pandemic.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/people-spe....

"The average cost of new cars is now well over $48,000—up almost $6,000 from two years ago and about $10,000 from September 2020, according to Kelley Blue Book. That figure largely tracks with inflation, but there are many other factors at play."

The last two times I rented a car, which were on opposite coasts, I was sent a bill for inflated toll charges that I absolutely had paid.

Someone's found a way to drum up consistent business for their automotive repair shop.

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