- Ensuring you hire vehicles out to licensed drivers
- How to check a car rental customer's DVLA licence
- Commercial vehicle insurance from Towergate
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Ensuring you hire vehicles out to licensed drivers
No one knows better than you that a vehicle should never be hired out until you’re satisfied that the person who is due to hire the vehicle really is who they say they are. Experience indicates that ‘walk-in’ customers that haven’t phoned first, cash customers and non-local customers can present the greatest risk, especially if it’s late on a Friday or at weekends when it can be harder to check references.
Thoroughly checking the customer’s driving licence, recording the driver number, checking the photo card licence picture matches the hirer and checking the licence for signs of tampering are vital first steps. However, just because a licence looks genuine, it may not in fact present a true and accurate picture. For example, someone who is close to losing their licence may go to the DVLA saying they’ve mislaid their licence and request a new one so that when their licence is revoked, they still hold what looks on paper like a valid licence.