Van Hired Out - Just come back in bit of a state. Advice?

[Minxy]

Its NOT Wissel's rental business, he just converted the van for someone else who is running his own rental business. Obviously that person has now asked Wissel to sort out the van so it can be rented out again, fortunately though Wissel never got to the point of doing any to rent out himself which is, IMV, a good thing.

 

[chaser]

Just a small detail, if renters are not expecting anything like this , and require everything back as if it's never been used, why are the collosal rents charged.

 

[Liloc]

Hey All,

I posted a few weeks ago that I had the opportunity to build a few vans to rent out and tag onto a friends new rental business.

Well I finished building his first van for this purpose last week:
View attachment 421092

It was added to a well known rental site and went out this weekend. Its just come back.

It's a state. The van was left on the road overnight around the corner from the business premises, it's covered in dog hair (I mean covered, no mention of dogs being in van), the bathroom door is hanging off and the whole van is vile inside. Actually struggling to work out how it could be so trashed in 3 days

Anyway, I could do with a bit of advice with how to proceed. There's obviously a deposit, but is this just normal?

Thanks, David

 

[Liloc]

That’s bad news, some people are just dirty and have no respect for anything , I wouldn’t give the deposit back!!

 

[Deneb]

And you think your changes can not be detected you need to research it more

There is a substantial difference between being able to detect that the data has been changed, and being able to retrieve the original information though.

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[Pelirocco]

make sure you have watertight terms and conditions , check them out with a solicitor . Take a large deposit and make it clear that you will sue them for additional costs incurred ( this is where you T&Cs need to be clear , and fair )
I am assuming you make the correct checks with their driving licences
Unfortunately it can be a bit of a learning process when it comes to finding out the ways people can try and rip you off

 

[gus-lopez]

why are the collosal rents charged.

That's the going rate to recoup the money they cost.

 

[Brains]

You're not condoning criminal behaviour are you?

No, definitely not condoning theft.

Although the company were not particularity honorable either so I have little sympathy for them.
Reap what you sow etc.

As I said he was an ex colleague, not a friend, I found out what had happened long after he had been made redundant .

 

[Minxy]

Thanks all. It isn't my van, it's one I've just finished building for a friend. It's him that has rented it out. Just gutted for him and annoyed as I spent a lot of time building it. It was perfect

I think I'm suitably put off renting them out myself now..

Looking a little closer, I almost throw up when I saw yellow liquid seeping out from under the rear toilet door - obviously overflowing, but not looked yet. Not just noticed the right rear wheel arch has crashed into something (paint scratched all around the arch).

 

[IslandApe]

Still not foolproof.
View attachment 421176

make sure you have watertight terms and conditions , check them out with a solicitor . Take a large deposit and make it clear that you will sue them for additional costs incurred ( this is where you T&Cs need to be clear , and fair )
I am assuming you make the correct checks with their driving licences
Unfortunately it can be a bit of a learning process when it comes to finding out the ways people can try and rip you off

That raises another issue of course. People like myself who do read the T&Cs will pick another rental company. Not because we intend to trash the vehicle, because we are aware that giving a blank cheque to someone who may not be 100% honest themselves is not a prudent approach. If you're allowing yourself to be charged for loss of income for example, there's no imperative on the part of the renter to expedite the repairs. Given my experience of hire car companies, that's assuming all of the issues were caused by me in the first place of course...

I suspect that this could be challenged in court, but I'm not going to put myself into this situation in the first place.

My plan is to rent a couple of designs before buying to see what suits my family, but I've already read some of the rental firms' T&Cs and have taken them off my list.

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[TonyEmm]

The data tagged info is not viable on the pic but contained in a file in the pic it shows correct time and date regardless of any date set on your camera this is the forensic info used every day by police and insurance investigators

It’s called EXIF data....

 

[Onemanandhisdog]

It’s called EXIF data....

And can be edited as i pointed out in post #46.

 

[gwyntaxi]

Hey All,

I posted a few weeks ago that I had the opportunity to build a few vans to rent out and tag onto a friends new rental business.

Well I finished building his first van for this purpose last week:
View attachment 421092

It was added to a well known rental site and went out this weekend. Its just come back.

It's a state. The van was left on the road overnight around the corner from the business premises, it's covered in dog hair (I mean covered, no mention of dogs being in van), the bathroom door is hanging off and the whole van is vile inside. Actually struggling to work out how it could be so trashed in 3 days

Anyway, I could do with a bit of advice with how to proceed. There's obviously a deposit, but is this just normal?

Thanks, David

I sympathise with you, but I mean what in the world possessed you to give your pride and joy to a rental co. to make a profit at your expense, they take all the profit, you make the massive investment, it’s a no brainier for a letting agent, and if it’s got a follow on rental a few days hence then that’s gonna be lost cos the van is in a trashed state. You lose every time.

 

[Googlebot]

This is why I decided to buy and take the hit in depreciation in case I didn’t like it. The charges were eye watering in case anything happened.

I wouldn’t like to hire ours out!

 

[Terry]

I sympathise with you, but I mean what in the world possessed you to give your pride and joy to a rental co. to make a profit at your expense, they take all the profit, you make the massive investment, it’s a no brainier for a letting agent, and if it’s got a follow on rental a few days hence then that’s gonna be lost cos the van is in a trashed state. You lose every time.

Wissel (David) built the van for a friend who is starting a hire company and this was the guys first hireDavid is now repairing the van ready to hire again and if I have this right building a couple more vans for the guy

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[Onemanandhisdog]

This is why I decided to buy and take the hit in depreciation in case I didn’t like it. The charges were eye watering in case anything happened.

I wouldn’t like to hire ours out!

But if you buy an older van to try things out, there is no depreciation.

I've been trying my Y2K van out for 6 years and it's worth about £6,000 more than i bought it for.

 

[TheBig1]

Being a little bit wise to such dealings, the hire company likely sees David's mate as a bit of a fool as a new provider. Let his van out to clients that other owners would immediately decline. The firm makes it's profit and the owner carries the can for repairs

 

[Chriseui]

I'd make the deposit £5000, with a condition that you automatically forfeit the deposit if the van is not returned during business hours when an inspection can take place.

 

[Brains]

I'd make the deposit £5000, with a condition that you automatically forfeit the deposit if the van is not returned during business hours when an inspection can take place.

That is called a 'late arrival'
The user would be charged an extra days hire
There should be no option to 'put the keys through the letterbox' as that is not classed as "redelivery"

 

[IslandApe]

I'd make the deposit £5000, with a condition that you automatically forfeit the deposit if the van is not returned during business hours when an inspection can take place.

Then you would have no business. From the customer point of view, why would they trust you to play fair with five grand of their hard earned? Too many people have too many horror stories with (smaller!) lost deposits under dubious pretexts from personal or acquaintance's experiences of vehicle hire. That particular condition lays the renter open to a huge penalty for something (traffic jams, puncture, etc.) beyond their control and would red flag the business to exactly the sort of sensible person that you do want as a customer.

The deposit has to be set at a lower rate to get rentals from the majority non tosser demographic. The business has to accept the tossers of this world as a business risk and build the business model (prices, offering, etc.) accordingly. Of course, you should also reserve the right to refuse the hire at handover stage after evaluating what you are potentially hiring to.

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[M-J]

I'd make the deposit £5000, with a condition that you automatically forfeit the deposit if the van is not returned during business hours when an inspection can take place.

You’d struggle to hire it out at all, might as well not bother.

 

[Lenny HB]

Just a small detail, if renters are not expecting anything like this , and require everything back as if it's never been used, why are the collosal rents charged.

How much would you charge if you had bought a van for say £75k to hire out?

 

[Gromett]

And you think your changes can not be detected you need to research it more

Changes in the exif data can be detected only if the data storage device is still in the camera that took it, even then it not guaranteed to be detectable.

If the file is copied to another filing system after the editing then there is no way of telling if the exif data has been modified.

It is possible in some manufacturers devices to checksum the image/exif data and store this to detect later modification. But if the checksum is stored on the local device then it could be recalculated. It must be stored remotely.

 

[Gromett]

And you think your changes can not be detected you need to research it more

You got me curious about how I would implement in software a digital signing process that would protect both the image data and the exif data from modification.
I immediately thought of using public key encryption to sign the photo and data. Using a TPM module on the camera to store the private key.

I then did a google search to find out if any manufactures were doing this already and it appears both Cannon and Nikon offer this feature on some cameras.
However, in both cases the firmware has been hacked and the private key extracted.

This was 10 years ago, but I am pretty sure the same would happen today.

Russian Software Firm Breaks Canon's Authenticity Verification, Big Time

Dmitry Sklyarov of Russian software company ElcomSoft announced yesterday that the encryption system used by Canon to prove the authenticity of

petapixel.com

That said I am not aware of any consumer grade cameras or phones that sign the data today.

 

[Blue Knight]

Very sad to hear this David. I hope it all works out well for your sir.

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[gus-lopez]

and require everything back as if it's never been used, why are the collosal rents charged.

for something of this value the period would probably be longer but also depending on the sell on value , but small machinery hire outs used to have a max cost recovery rate of 6 months.

from the majority non tosser demographic. T

It is a struggle to find them. Along with decently run honest businesses