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Hypothetically if you hire a bike under these T&Cs
1.5.5 Responsibility. You will be responsible for the bike and the equipment during the hire period and you will be liable for any loss of or damage to the bike or equipment from the moment that we provide the bike and equipment to you and until you return the bike and equipment to us. Your hire fee includes a damage waiver to cover all damage to the bike, other than negligent or intentional damage.
fall off on a trail that is well within your ability & damage it, would you expect to pay for the damage?
Nothing.
If it wasn't
negligent or intentional damage.
Then it looks like it should be covered by the waiver included in the hire fee. Is there anything relating to how negligence or intent is determined?
@thepurist no I don’t think so.
And then the discussion would be over what counts as negligence, not “well we don’t charge you for things like damaged grips or a saddle, but we do charge for “major” damage”.
The next paragraph says
1.5.6 Loss and damage deposit. A £250 deposit per bike is required when hiring a bike. This is refunded to you (in whole or in part) on return of the bike in the condition in which it was provided to you, and we reserve the right to make deductions from your deposit for damages we identify on return and these will be notified to you.
Which kind of contradicts the first…
Not really, they may only deduct from the deposit if negligence or intentional damage has been caused, easier than pursuing through SCC if people refuse to pay for small damage.
Ask the hire company for clarification.
you will be liable for any loss of or damage to the bike or equipment
...
Your hire fee includes a damage waiver to cover all damage to the bike
Well, which is it?
Yeah I’d ask them.
A few years back I hired/demoed a hope bling machine. 2018 I think so the first one they did. HB160 was it? £1000 deposit left on credit card. Mostly to deter thieves I guess. £7.5k bike after all. I came back to the shop with blood all down shirt having had an off… slight scuff on the saddle and a chip/scratch on the top tube. The guy couldn’t really work out what to do about it. In the end as everything worked and they could clearly rent it out again they didn’t charge me anything. Thing is the bike didn’t belong to the shop so it wasn’t their loss, it would be going back to hope at some point and I think the guy in the shop thought it was hope’s problem…
I got the feeling if I’d brought it back needing a new wheel or something before it could be ridden again that I’d have been billed for it.
What's the reputation of the shop? You should both be working to rule one and I'd hope that these t&C's are just to cover them if you don't.
It is a minefield though.
If you crash and the fork crown failed then that could either be that you broke their fork crown by crashing, or them caused you to crash by hiring you a bike with a faulty fork crown.
As ever, it comes down to what is legally 'reasonable' for the particular type of bike and the rider.
MTBing at all levels involves crashes, sometimes. Hire an bog-standard hardtail at a trail centre and fall off on the red route next door and snap something, that's a reasonable use and I'd expect the deposit back. Find the biggest drop-off you can and fold it in half, not so much.
When I was doing bike hire we never charged for damage. That was mostly hybrids and road bikes, though a few MTBs too. There would be the occasional breakage / scratch etc but it seemed to work out ok.
OTOH when I was working in a bike shop a potential customer asked for a test ride on a fairly high-end MTB. That was fine and he took it away for the weekend. TO WALES. I think we'd charged him £50 (to be discounted off the price). There was certainly more than £50 of damage to it in terms of scratches, scrapes and dents. It looked like he'd had multiple offs and it had been banging around in the back of a truck - and he didn't buy it.
Cheers, it’s a decent Enduro / big Trail bike hired on site at a trail centre with some big, fairly gnarly trails so is expected to be ridden hard I’d imagine.
The crash was a pretty lame slow speed effort and by the looks of it the seat stay took an unfortunate knock on its edge which dented it, ridden for a couple of hours after and not noticed until the bike was handed back.
My mate’s in discussion with them, not sure what the outcome will be at the moment tbh. But if nothing else I think their T&Cs need re-writing IF they do expect him to pay.
OTOH when I was working in a bike shop a potential customer asked for a test ride on a fairly high-end MTB
On a demo I’d feel pretty bad handing something back with even a little scratch, unless it was already in a state.
I took a demo bike up into the peaks (about 20 years ago) out a massive crease into the left hand chainstay. Decided against buying one.
Shop owner just shrugged and called the distributor, and they sent him a new pair of stays.
I actually bought the ex demo bike at the end of the season, 4 months later.
It'd had a grand total of two demo rides.
When I was doing bike hire we never charged for damage. That was mostly hybrids and road bikes, though a few MTBs too. There would be the occasional breakage / scratch etc but it seemed to work out ok.
Cheers, it’s a decent Enduro / big Trail bike hired on site at a trail centre with some big, fairly gnarly trails so is expected to be ridden hard I’d imagine.
There has to be a degree of common sense applied here then surely. An amount of fair-use wear and tear is to be expected, doubly so if the rental is from a MTB trail centre rather than say Evans.
Returning a lease car this is documented to the nth degree by a central set of guidelines whose name I forget. Dings smaller than [size] are fine, larger and you'll be charged a set fee for repair. They take photos with a banana ruler in shot for scale. I've no idea whether something similar exists for cycles but perhaps it should?
There's a simple choice. Accept that all bike hire prices will have to be higher to allow for breakages, or that folk breaking things should have to pay. IMHO it should be the same as car or van hire. 😄
Seems sensible...if I'd hired a bike and crashed and damaged it then I'd be expecting to pay for the damage. If the bill was less than the waiver then I'd expect whatever was left of the waiver after they'd deducted the damage. If the damage was more than the waiver then I'd expect an additional bill to cover the difference from the waiver amount and the damage amount.
Am I just being too sensible or is there genuinely some.soet of get-out-clause or entrapment-clause there? Seems rather obvious to me.
Having never hired an MTB I'd always assumed the hire cost covered the risk of damage. Especially if it's at a trail center, they know what people are using the bikes for.
I did damage a bike on a demo day once which they didn't seem too happy about but it didn't cross my mind I should have offered to pay for it. It seems like an inherent risk in handing sports equipment out to anyone who asks for it.
I’d expect to pay for any damage I was responsible for.
sillyoldman
Full Member
I’d expect to pay for any damage I was responsible for
You did pay for it, that’s the point in the waiver being part of the fee
I’d expect to pay for any damage I was responsible for.
And so did my mate tbh, until he read the bit that said he’d paid a waiver to cover him for damage…
Did he pay some or all of it by credit card? If so the card company should be able to help with advice if he can't get it resolved. It's the company's money you're spending (initially)
If the damage was more than the waiver then I’d expect an additional bill to cover the difference from the waiver amount and the damage amount
What? That’s ridiculous! The waiver is effectively insurance. They keep the waiver, you wash your hands of it. The waiver makes it their risk! That’s why you pay it.
If they’ve done their sums right, the culmination of everyone paying the waiver will cover the average cost of damage over X time vs X amount of damage. If they haven’t, well, more fool them they’ll have to claim on their business insurance won’t they!
Does he have copies of the hire agreement and waiver?
"All damage to the bike, other than negligent or intentional damage".
Trail bike hired and ridden at a trail centre then I would say that's entirely within reasonable use. It's not like he took a cheap hardtail down the Fort William DH track.
Takes 2 seconds to Google that this is Bike Park Wales - https://www.bikeparkwales.com/our-terms-and-conditions
T&Cs don't have any more than the OP has pasted above, it's ambiguous at best, but it does seem to me to imply that the £250 "Loss and damage deposit" is the "damage waiver" that "cover[s] all damage to the bike, other than negligent or intentional damage.". That said you could reasonably assume that the "damage waiver" is some other amount included in the hire fee, so who knows.