Japanese rental car firms deal with parking fines

Rental car firms in Japan frequently find themselves having to deal with the burden of parking fines, with media sources noting that collectively, these companies have had to pay out tens of millions of yens since last November. A new system was introduced in the past two years, which now holds the registered owner of a given car responsible when the driver of the vehicle parks illegally. As such, rental firms in Japan must foot the bill, when car hire clients violate parking rules.

The All Japan Rent-A-Car Association recently conducted a survey, with the participation of nearly 3,300 member car rental companies. The study found that together, these firms had been fined at least 4,900 times thus far. Since this problem is becoming increasingly cumbersome for car hire firms, many have decided to pass on the cost of fines to consumers. As such, some companies now bill their clients a sum equivalent to the amount that they have been charged, in order to cover the cost of these fines. Under the current parking regime, whenever a renter is given a parking ticket, the car hire firm is automatically notified by local police. In the past, the normal course of action would have simply been that the client would have had to pay for the full amount of the fine, once they dropped off their vehicle, at the end of the rental period.

Nippon Rent A Car, one of the largest car hire firms in Japan, noticed a dramatic increase in the number of parking fines that it received in recent months. While Nippon would end up paying, on average, 60 fines per month, this grew by nearly 20 instances each month, since the beginning of the year.

www.nipponrentacar.co.jp