OK, at 141 posts it is getting hard to find things in this topic … do we know whether that is the case?
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They asked if would affect their re-entry to Australia if there was legal action, not sure they are Australian but even so the State/Territory Free Legal advice centre/s should be able to guide them…
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So glad to have found this forum! I have had the same issues with CND for the last 12 months. They are claiming $770 of damage done to the side of this van, although I cannot see any damage?!!.. can anyone else spot the $770 of damage? They are also claiming a further $1100 of damage to the rear of the van which was I admit looks to be a small dent, but likely less than 25mm in length (so deemed ‘wear and tear’ as per their policy). I asked CND to qualify their claims and to measure the small dent at the back and if it was bigger than 25mm I would get it repaired, but their disputes team declined to provide this info and have now placed a default against me for $1800 and the matter is now with a collections agent Milton Graham, which I am in the middle of disputing. CND have provided invoices for these repairs with additional items added that do not relate to the apparent damage such as ‘light repair’ etc, they are complete frauds. I am happy to see these guys in court as a judge will laugh them out of it. I have also recently
reported them to Fair Trading. After now seeing countless reports on here of similar fraudulent damage claims it’s clear that @CarNextDoor_Official are running nothing more than a scam next door, what a disgrace of a business.
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Welcome to the community @KateMcNab
Regardless of whether they are ‘laughed out of it’ if you attend court be sure you have legal advice. The difference between a win and a loss, and paying costs that can be considerable, is being well prepared legally as well as procedurally, with evidence.
Without judging the merits of your statements we had a very small door ding fixed a few years ago (purely vanity reasons) and it was $550. It was difficult to photo the ding to send off for quotes. With that background don’t make assumptions a court would summarily deem the claim frivolous. A company having a record of egregious behaviour is often discounted because an individual case is an individual case that has to be proven on balance.
Be sure to keep each and every exchange with CND and hopefully you have your own photos of the vehicle when you picked it up, and returned it, and take it all to the hearing. FWIW any photographic evidence can be more or less compelling if the digital image is preserved along with its embedded date and time information although there are ways to tamper with it, as well as the dates on the image file itself.
Be sure to ask for that. If their evidence is say a week after return who did what to whom in that time? All that being written, thanks for your contribution. I wish you well in your defence.
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Are these assessments or actual costs incurred?
One read of the CND owners insurance policy says that the value of these assessments can be treated as an accrual over time. The owner can choose to accrue these repairs and elect to collect the sum total at a future time to carry out all accrued repairs concurrently to suit the owner. Who pockets the difference between the accrual collected and actual costs? Is the difference taxable income?
In many ways this may mitigate the actual cost incurred by the owner. Your legal representative may also find the procedure open to question. The owner being able to choose when the vehicle (primarily for private use) is repaired is very different to a full time rental business such as Avis, Hertz etc. although noting the Van has a CND logo suggests this owner may be running it as a business more than a hobby or mainly for private use.
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In my opinion, this should be illegal i.e. selling doubtful or otherwise debts, at a discount or otherwise, to another party.
Fair Trading and social media are in my opinion more worthwhile than a court of law.
Why do you say that? Social conscience? Debt is a ‘property’ like any other. What would be the ramifications if debt could not be sold or bought? Debt is routinely sold and bought in the financial world to manage risk, cash flow, and returns on money. If that was inhibited consider how financial markets would react. My expectation is there would be less credit available at higher costs across the board.
In cases where a company like CND is claiming damages they believe they have the legal rights to do so, they believe the customer is in default, and companies like Milton Graham work on commissions against recoveries, or can buy debt at a discount, and either way their profit depend on if and how much they collect. Sometimes the customer is being hard done by, and sometimes the company is being stiffed. How would one differentiate that beyond ‘the contract’ between company and customer?
Debt is a high risk business. In my younger days I briefly worked in a store located in a US ghetto. 90% of sales were on store offered financing (credit). Every quarter the shop would write off $30-40,000 of bad debt that could not be recovered since the customers were long gone and a court judgement is a piece of paper, not a $100 note, if that helps how businesses see the issue. That shop could not sell the debt because it was as risky as it got and there were no takers. If there was a buyer the debts would have been sold since even pennies on the dollar are more than nothing.
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Because it means that you can enter into a contractual arrangement with one party and then suddenly find yourself being harassed by another party and effectively in a contractual arrangement with that other party, of whom you have never even heard. (Yes, potentially you agreed to that in the 99 pages of fine print. Making it illegal would avoid that.)
Because it allows the original company to distance themselves from what might occur on the say-so of the original company that a debt even exists. The second company’s reputation as judged by the first company is important but the second company’s reputation as judged by the customer is not important. The first company’s reputation as judged by the customer is important. So it’s a way of outsourcing any reputational damage that might occur as a consequence of debt collection. “Oh, nothing to do with us. That wasn’t us. We just sold the debt. We are washing our hands of everything that happened after that.” That creates some doubtful incentives.
This isn’t a finance (credit) situation. It is disputed that the debt even exists.
You are correct that debt is bought and sold in the financial world but that is between companies (typically) and involving financially sophisticated parties. Individual consumers can often avail themselves of stronger protections than are available to companies etc.
Many good points @person but I’ll focus on the most germane
As with the US election, there is a process be it right or wrong, good or bad, and it becomes a procedural issue with contracts and evidence on whether a debt exists and who is responsible for it.
A law covering all possibilities prohibiting a debt to be collected by a third party could easily be unworkable. Is the third party working for the second party? Are they contractor or employees or subcontractors? Then in spite of the letterhead in play, they could be one in law for the purpose of collecting a debt claimed by the second party.
Sometimes dodgy companies make bogus claims,and sometimes like platforms (ebay, youtube, and so many others) they may be innocently (or not) adhering to their own contracts with their ‘sellers’.
If you could draft a law that would withstand scrutiny and not have unintended consequences that are apparent from the get go, I would love to see it and would likely support it.
I am not taking the side of CND and they seem unconcerned with their ‘sellers’ and the bits of contracts posted suggest their business model is almost designed to enable exploiting customers.
One might think making it illegal to sell/collect a disputed debt through a third party is all it takes. Imagine what a dodgy customer could do to businesses with that one, for starters.
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is starting to look questionable at best.
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Hi there,
Happy to find this forum.
Seems like there’re many people who have suffered from this dodgy Car Next Door company. And unfortunately, me one of them! Try to avoid using it!
I rented the car just for one hour and after 4 weeks received an email from them I’m due to pay $2000. Apparently the owner of the car claimed the damage, which is a small scratch and dent… I haven’t even noticed it when I returned the vehicle, as the car was in a very poor condition (the car had massive previous damages). They sent me the quote estimate ~$2500, from Dinggo app which is I believe part of their scumming scheme. (Just want to point the value of this car is not more than $2500-3000 as it has a lot of damages and mechanical issues!). I messaged the owner asked her if she wants I pay her some money instead of repair that dent and scratch (as she hasn’t done so with her previous damages). She said to settle the repairs through CND as their system allows the owners to keep the money. That way she could get more of it! I researched other repairs and received a quote $1000-1500 for this job! I pointed that I’m happy to pay a reasonable price to cover the costs but definitely not the quotes they have provided by calling them the most affordable in Brisbane! So the question is how much money Dinggo app and CND makes of it… I Googled those repairs shops and saw the only negative review about those repairs shops. Seems like they provided special prices for Dinggo. Really dodgy…Seems like CND policy doesn’t protect the borrowers at all! The owners are keep renting the cars out while the cars are so heavily damaged and more likely not even roadworthy…So disappointing service! Why the borrowers have to pay to Dinggo and CND while there are more reliable repairs shops who can do the same job cheaper? Why it’s up to the owner to choose how much the borrower should pay?? Zero protection for borrowers. I think it’s supposed to be fair for everyone…
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Welcome to the community @elly.
The more feedback, positive or negative that the community gathers, the better informed consumers. With the stories so far and the business model of CND it will not be gaining any of my custom.
Perhaps it deserves some more attention and a Choice Shonky nomination. @jhook, @BrendanMays?
For the way it handles customer complaints and the car damage procedure. This appears to be open to exploitation by unreliable owners. Perhaps there are also honest CND owners out there?
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It appears that a goodly number of CND Owners are as happy as a roughly similar proportion of the renters.
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Don’t get me started on “review” sites. Maybe we could nominate them for a Shonky too.
I don’t doubt that CND car owners are more happy than not - laughing all the way to the bank.
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$1,000 for a minor mark on a beat up P.O.S?
The van looks like you would get change from $1,000 if you bought it.
What a disgraceful bunch of scam artists.
Welcome to the Community @jeraz
Although you leave open some room for doubt it appears you may be another victim to their business model if only by lack of due diligence and having significant photo evidence. Who would think anyone would be so audacious as to claim damage to a dented and well used van? Yet here you are 
Other than suggesting you read this topic from the beginning I am unable to add anything further. Others might restate advice, and perhaps someone may have something additional?
Please let us know how you go.
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Assume your recollection is correct.
Have CND provided a clear photo highlighting the damage?
If your photos before and after show no damage, you could say so and forward both your before and after photos as evidence in response to the claim with your repudiation. IE your evidence that you have not damaged the vehicle.
While there are possibly good CND owners put there, CND accident/minor damage policy is open to abuse and rorts by owners. There are early posts detailing how owners can bank credit for every successful claim for repair/restoration. Each item is costed as a one off event. The owner is free to save these up and have all undertaken in the one visit to the repairer. A much more economical repair and a single off hire event instead of multiple as billed. CND also collect a percentage for every successful claim. Much more than they make from a single hire. The CND owner gets to pocket any difference between what they have collected from customers and the actual cost of the repairs. There is no credit back to the customer.
It might be legal in accordance with their contact. It stinks and is ruining a great business opportunity. It’s also possible CND owners working the system this way are taking advantage of the tax system. The failure of CND to credit any savings between the actual cost of repair and amount billed may be legally challengeable by the ACCC?
@BrendanMays Choice might like to consider this further, as an unfair contract term/condition?
As an alternative - suggestion to anyone caught the same way by CND.
If it was my choice, I’d offer to arrange for the scratch to be repaired by an NRMA/RACQ etc authorised repairer at my cost and pay for a days hire to pick the vehicle up and drop it off at the end. I hear CND hire vehicles out cheap.
I’ll note this months RACQ has a 2 page spread to the alternate car hire business models featuring Car Next Door in a positive light. It’s extremely disappointing, but typical of their lower standards when compared to Choice.
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Do you have a photo from CND highlighting the damage claimed? I’d not do anything without that to be sure of what is required.
There is a suspicion the owner or CND might reject such an offer as it challenges their very profitable business model.
Compared to car hire of which I’ve racked up a thousand or so hires without issues through work and pleasure, CND seems to have a disproportionately high number of complaints related to vehicle damage. I can suggest similar for my previous work mates.
What we don’t know is if it’s a select small number of CND owners with multiple claims for the same vehicle or very randomly spread across all owners. That might require the ACCC to throw it’s maximum legal weight at the business and owners. We don’t know how many owners claims CND rejects, if any. It would seem that to build it’s reputation CND would be forth coming with the basic statistics on both counts in response to suitable inquiries.
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The damage in the before and after photos look identical to me.
The number plate appears to be NSW. If so, is it legal to have a P.O.S. like this registered in NSW?
I was lead to believe that vehicles must be presentable as well as roadworthy to get the annual pink slip for each years registration.
Perhaps this bomb should be reported to RMS.
The ACCC actually did something regarding the Australian 4WD Hire scams.
Paid advertorial?
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It’s wrapped up in a promotion for Car Sharing that most heavily features Car Next Door and includes details relevant to Go Get. I could have misread things? The article has a definite emphasis on Car Next Door.
I’m not sure if copying the print article would meet fair use.
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