A van hire company has hit out at its rivals for having unrealistically low rental rates. TLS has been renting vans for over 20 years but like all companies they suffered during the global financial crisis. However, with an end to the bad times in sight their sales director has criticised other companies for offering unrealistically low van hire rates.

Sales director of TLS, Simon Cook, said: “Last year was extremely difficult. We had to deal with our competitors setting unsustainable rates. This created a disorderly market which did not benefit anyone, least of all the customer.

“These rental companies could not have been maintaining their fleets properly with the rates they set. That includes replacing aged vehicles in the fleet. I can't imagine how the rates they set could have been profitable either".

“However, in the last quarter of the year we saw signs which suggested the bad period has now ended. While you can still get van hire extremely cheaply the prices have increased to a sustainable point.

He added: “Most of the van hire companies which offered those ridiculously low prices have either now disappeared or are finding themselves in financial difficulties. That has been a boom as more and more customers turn to reputable companies like us.

“They realised that low van hire rates might be attractive but ultimately a competitive but realistic rate from a responsible supplier is the way forward.”

Last week a van was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Police were called out to a parked Hire van in Manchester city centre when a chemical substance was found leaking out the back of it. Emergency crews were called out to the transit van in Charles Street. The fire crews and police vans were at the scene investigating for nearly an hour. In the end it turned out to be a non-toxic cleaning substance.

 

The Daily Mail has uncovered the story of a van hire customer who was badly treated by their rental company. A self employed electrician had rented a van and was hit in a collision with a foreign national from the Czech Republic.  Although the Czech driver admitted liability in a police statement and there was corroboration from two witnesses present, the van driver never received his compensation from the insurance company MoreTh>n. After two years of waiting he wrote to the Daily Mail. Thanks to the newspaper's intervention the man was able to get back the £500 that he had paid for the rental van, plus the £100 excess he had had to pay out of his own insurance. The company also gave him an extra £100 as a sweetener in an admission of wrong doing.

Columnist Magaret Stone wrote: "When a policyholder is involved with an incident with a foreign driver, whether the accident occurs overseas or in the UK, it might take longer to deal with than a domestic accident. But a delay of two years? MoreTh>n had no suitable explanation and has made a grovelling apology. She added "It is issuing a cheque for £714.30. This covers your van hire, the £100 excess covered by the legal expenses part of your policy and contains an extra £100 to sweeten the apology."
 
Therefore it is a good idea to make sure that your insurance policy is suitable before you decide to hire a van. Rhino does excellent rates for fully inclusive third party insurance.