12-Day Road Trip Around New Zealand's South Island

Watched a New Zealand traffic rules video and got accustomed to driving outside the store before setting off.

I think they almost always assess damage for cars that have full insurance! Our car had no scrapes or scratches, but they insisted the paint was damaged and needed evaluation! I think it might be related to us having purchased the super full insurance! I hope the rental company investigates this thoroughly!

Easy pickup and return

Excellent all round

Seemed to be easy to use, will try them again

Waited a long while for shuttle and also to get our car as the pick up location was not at the airport but off-site. We also had to make a local call to contact the company for a shuttle and that means overseas call charges for foreign visitors like ourselves. When we picked up the car and asked for the company to mark out all the scratches, they said it was our responsibility to take photos and accept the car, which already had scratches all over. They claimed that they already had a database of the car's scratches before handover (which they did not show us as they did not have it available then), and the onus was on us to do a comprehensive 100% check capturing pictures of all scratches (hard to do after a 14-hour flight!). When we returned the car after completing the rental, they claimed that we had caused some new surface scratches on the bumper even though I was not involved in any accident, and suddenly they made available a tablet showing the pictures of the pre-existing condition of the car before rental. We were made to pay an excess of $4000 before we were allowed to go catch our return flight, and the attitude of the counter staff was rude and terrible in the whole process, basically holding us back from leaving. Have shared the story with Easyrentcars on the pain points trying to claim back the partial excess from the so-called damage repair costs for the surface scratches which are just a few of the many across the car. Won't rent from these guys ever again and would recommend all NZ visitors to avoid renting from them. Unethical behaviour.

Appreciate Easyrentcars helping me claim back the partial excess, especially since the car rental company did not want to respond to me on how they have repaired the vehicle and how much it cost even after 3 weeks. Find it unbelievable that they actually repainted the whole bumper to cover up the scratches and it costed them around $1000 (see attached photo for scratches at left corner of bumper). But really big thanks to Easyrentcars for helping me close the case with the rental company and move on.