International car hire firm Europcar has been accused of ripping off its customers over the last 10 years with grossly inflated repair bills when cars suffer damage.

The overcharging of as much as 300% is being investigated by Trading Standards officers in Leicester where Europcar is based and may breach the Fraud Act and the Consumer Rights Act. There have been claims that the garages carrying out the repairs were secretly told to inflate the costs by Europcar, to include a large share for itself and the company have admitted that the mess could cost it £30 million to clean up, a figure that could be optimistic given that around £38 million was wiped off the company’s value when the allegations emerged.

Suspecting that the rip of could be an industry wide practice not just confined to Europcar the Daily Mail has advised car hire customers billed for damage to insist on seeing a copy of the bill for the work the car hire company say had to be carried out, and to pass the details to the newspaper for investigation of possible fraud.